


Dream By Day

by JD_Riley



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Alpha, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, Birth, Blow Jobs, Bounty Hunter, Curses, Developing Relationship, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Graphic description of birth, Historical, Knotting, M/M, Navajo, Navajo Legend, Omega Verse, Omegaverse, Original Fiction, Paranormal, Rape, Slow Burn, Smut, Switching, Violence, Western, american west
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2018-12-19 16:07:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 65,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11901282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD_Riley/pseuds/JD_Riley
Summary: A two-thousand dollar bounty is one hell of an incentive for Cole Harper to find his quarry deep in the dusty desert west of the Rockies, but of course, there's a catch:  It's only half if the man is dead.  The Alpha Harper is tracking is no average coach robber or basic scoundrel; he's a man who's accused of tearing the still-beating heart out of his betrothed in a fit of feral Alpha rage--who's also rumored to be proficient in the more sinister magics of the medicine men he met in his travels.  But Harper doesn't believe in magic.  All he wants is the bounty, and if he can manage it, he'd like to have itall,which means Dr. Gabriel Pruitt has to come back to the Marshals alive.  It wasn't going to be a piece of cake even with the best of circumstances...but there's something the doctor is afraid of.  Something in the desert.  Something waiting.  Somethingwatching.





	1. Chapter 1

The morning was a cool steely gray that stretched over the wide expanse of ragged desert and as the sun rose over the distant jutting mountains, they became obscured through a shimmering ethereal haze. They loomed unseen to the East behind the shroud, appearing at their leisure when the atmosphere was right enough for his eyes to form them. The wind was hot and carried with it a thin, red dust that settled over everything as if a dry mist. Dead, uprooted things tumbled in the wind, and off a little ways to the left a dust devil whirled with fervor but no precision, kicking at the earth and stumbling like a ghostly drunkard that could disintegrate with the slightest alteration of current.

Cole Harper packed the last bit of tobacco he had into a jagged bit of rolling paper and licked it shut to smoke it while his paint pawed at the hard packed trail and nodded his head with impatience. The scent he was tracking was lukewarm at best and half-close to stale. His quarry was lying in wait, hidden somewhere in the vast expanse of the wild, cunning and extraordinarily intelligent. In ten years as a bounty hunter, he'd never before faced an enemy of such spark. There had been plenty who'd run but none who had been so stealthy and so innovative in their flight. He couldn't rightly expect much different. After all, most men he tracked hadn't been in the badlands and the desert as long as Dr. Gabriel Pruitt. A man who had allegedly learned every survival tactic he had from the medicine men of tribes that weren't always keen on holding a palaver with a white man. He was no ordinary doctor. That was for damned certain.

From what he'd heard of the man in the settlements and forts along the busier trails, he was a man of many names. Gabriel Pruitt was just one of them. His true name was largely unknown but his crimes were not so easily forgotten, murder chief among them. Folk that had met him who would speak to a bounty hunter, described him as kind in face and gentle in voice. A rare combination for an Alpha out in the West. It was enough to get him as much help as he could want anywhere he went. He was described as assistive, accommodating, and his posture unassuming and open. It wasn't something that many murderers could boast and it wasn't something Cole had been expecting. But expectations were something of a luxury in this day and age and those who held them were often disappointed.

Cole lit his rolled cigarette and took a puff of the old crap that tasted more like sweepings than tobacco and then spat in the dirt. The doctor was a con man, plain and simple. He'd seen too many evil men present one face to the world and hold a tempest at bay inside. _A man of many names_ , he reminded himself. He'd seen men who had enamored settlements to the point that they'd become sheriff. He'd been nearly lynched by whole towns for having taken his bounty—the richest or most powerful man in a dying outpost of a village settled deep in a lonely valley. The kind of place that couldn't get wiped off a map only as it had never made it onto one in the first place. The doctor, as with many, were dangerous for their charm almost as much as their wit and their skill with a pistol.

He gently tapped his black and white paint into a walk and felt the stallion's energy thrumming between his thighs. A veritable engine, Stanford was. The horse was one he had broken himself and despite the word, _broken_ , Stanford was anything but. He was spirited and vindictive and Cole had no doubt that he would remain so until the very last breath he took. It was a wonder sometimes that the animal hadn't done what he'd heard they would do, their minds too pure and wild to think of themselves in any other manner than _free_. A rancher once told a tale of a mustang who'd longed so far for freedom that he had leaned his head down for a drink from a river and had purposefully dipped the whole of his muzzle into the water. There was no amount of pulling and tugging that could stop him for when a horse has made up his mind—that is the end of it. The end of it, it was. Sometimes, he thought Stanford's revenge would come in a flurry and would unravel as unexpectedly as it would violently. Often, he eyed the places where the canyons lay ragged in the wastes and wondered if that day might be the day that the paint should send them both to their maker in one brave leap.

As if reading his thoughts, Stanford nodded quickly and stopped short, dancing back a few steps to test his limits before Cole jabbed his flanks with his heels and clicked his tongue.

“Ayup, ya damned fool,” Cole grunted, his voice lined in gravel and fitting for his jaded gaze and unforgiving demeanor. Whatever he thought about Stanford, he couldn't fault the horse for much, even if the mean bastard might some day put an end to him. Reason being, Stanford was a master hunter.

It was difficult to believe but he and Stanford had been through too many hunts together for him to ever even consider another horse. Perhaps it was why he was still alive after all this time. The knack that Stanford had in sensing intent was perhaps the most incredible talent Cole had ever witnessed. When they were close, Stanford knew it. When they needed to be quiet, Stanford was as unobtrusive as a mouse. When Cole's life was threatened at the end of a wild chase—Stanford was willing to draw blood. The sight and smell of it was enough to strike panic into most horses but for Stanford, it was as though he saw it as a necessary evil.

As they walked, Cole recalled a moment in which he had thought that perhaps, just perhaps, Stanford might have made a soft spot in his heart for him. A time when the child-murdering devil, Harlan McTrall had surprised them both in what should have been an embarrassingly obvious ambush, clicking his gun straight at Cole's back as he'd walked up to inspect a smoldering campfire...a trap. With a cold steel barrel behind his right ear, Cole had been forced to kneel in the dust. Harlan had thought of just about everything. The trap to lure him, the wherewithal to disarm him, even exactly where he'd planned to shoot him.

He hadn't thought of the horse.

Cole squeezed Stanford with his legs and the stallion began a trot, kicking up clouds of dry dirt as they went. His exceptionally powerful sense of smell was leading him toward a jutting bit of rock which he circled cautiously. The scent of Pruitt wasn't powerful and likely, he'd been gone for a day or so. He found blessedly little evidence that the man had even been there at all—no fire, nothing to suggest he had done more than just lay on his bed roll and sleep for a short time. He knew he was being hunted. He knew and he was prepared to run.

His scent wasn't as overstated as some Alphas and, at first, Cole had thought he could have been a Beta, though all witness testimony assured him that the man was, in fact, very much an Alpha. The manner in which the marshals had found the bodies of his victims would have at least offered some evidence to show it.

The descriptions had been disturbing. Limbs and organs and bones strewn about. Bodies ripped apart in a horrific Alpha rage. It was mindless, ruthless, and unfathomable. He'd set up a practice in Talton, a small mining town settled deep into the Rocky Mountains. He'd done well, utilizing a clear, cold spring that was said to have healing properties. He practiced medicine that was taught to him from schools on the Eastern coast—fancy schools with plenty of science to back up his methods. But there was a darker, more sinister force at work in Pruitt's practice. Or so the gentle folk of Talton had told him when he'd asked...

_“He's a monster. He's possessed by the spirit of a witch doctor!”_

_“I'm sorry for the poor man. You see, he's been cursed by a witch. A witch of the Cheyenne. I heard tell he was in love with a Cheyenne Omega and the chief had him blackened with a spell...”_

_“Made a deal with the devil, the boy did. Man should have known better than to wander into the hands of those demon redskins.”_

_“You know, sometimes he could put his hands on you and cure you. Well...with a bit of this and that in your tea sometimes too. He was good about it though. Made all that hokey witchcraft sound very much intelligent when it came from his own words... Used to ask me about my dreams...what I thought they meant.”_

_“Learned all his black magic from the Arapaho. He's been fooling around with those heathens for years, painting himself like a savage and shooting arrows into buffalo. A doctor? I don't think so. Never was, I'll reckon.”_

_“He had a skull in his office. You know what kind of man sits at his desk and scribbles away with another man's bones staring at him over the blotter? A mad man...”_

Smoke coiled out of his mouth like a snake while he took another pass around the rocks and then led the horse toward it, pawing all over the temporary camp before he rode off with his eyes to the dirt, noting small signs of Pruitt's direction in the loose regolith. He wasn't far. The scent of him had been getting stronger by the day and it was really no wonder. The doctor had no horse and Cole had been gaining steadily. It wouldn't be long before Pruitt should have been backed into enough of a corner that he would have to start becoming more crafty. He'd already doubled back a few times and had even created false scent trails. Those things took time and were risky if Cole didn't fall for them. He'd only fallen for one such trick so far. Pruitt would have to do better next time.

Stanford's ears flicked. Something had caught his attention. He brought himself to a halt and snorted, swinging his back end to the left a little bit with uncertainty.

“Whoa, boy.”

Stanford tossed his head and snorted again.

The dry wind shifted and Cole raised a brow. Pruitt's comparatively gentle Alpha scent was stronger from the west, all of his efforts to remain a safe distance or at least downwind somewhat coming to naught with the fickle weather of the dry landscape. He took a deep, lingering breath of it. Unlike other Alphas, Pruitt's scent didn't sting in his nose and although not necessarily _pleasant_ , it was not _unpleasant_ either. It was musky and smokey and honed with the familiarity of finely worn leather. It was not only Cole's nose that was exceptional, his scent memory was incomparable. He would remember Pruitt's scent for as long as he lived, just as he had with all the others.

The marshal's grit-laden tone rumbled through his memory.

_“Bounty's double if you bring him to Talton to hang, Harper.”_

He'd taken one live one before. He'd even considered it this time if only for the attempt to learn what Pruitt had to say for himself. If only to see how he might defend himself in a court of law. After all, it was interesting, was it not? Black magic and all. When it came down to it, Cole Harper didn't believe in black magic. Or white magic. Or any kind of witchcraft or religion in the slightest. Such legends and stories were merely cruel bedtime stories made up by mischievous grandparents who twisted nightmares from words in an effort to make their children or children's children behave. Gabriel Pruitt was a man of many names...and a man born of local legend as a doctor who dabbled in the supernatural—it was certainly a tale, and probably _just that._ Whether or not Pruitt had even committed a crime...well that wasn't any of Cole's business.

The only hang up about taking him alive was that he was an Alpha. Had he been a Beta, perhaps it could have been a possibility—moreso than it was now, anyway. A summary execution was likely the manner of death he would face at Cole's hands and the thought was in no way distasteful to the bounty hunter...until a doubled bounty was involved. _'Every trail has its end and every calamity brings its lesson'_ he thought wryly.

Twice the bounty for Pruitt was two thousand dollars. The government, and the town of Talton, was itching to get a hold of the man who'd practiced a whispered magic and...

_Tore the heart out of Elvira Bergund and ripped her lover to shreds._

A simple case of a jealous Alpha gone feral. A man driven to kill by a fickle Omega and her boneheaded and thuggish brute of an affair. It was enough to make Cole almost feel for Pruitt. Though, nobody in the town seemed to even consider that the sweetest and most virtuous Omega, the blonde haired, sun-kissed Miss Bergund, could have actually been leading Pruitt on...that was all Cole's thoughts on the matter. Omegas, like any other dynamic, could be two-faced and unapologetic about their duplicity. It was an Alpha's keenness to protect and provide that often lead to certain types of misunderstandings. Misunderstandings that could lead an Omega to their death.

“What do you think, Stanford?” he grumbled out, as he gently squeezed his sides to pull him into a trot.

Stanford didn't seem to think much of Pruitt. He was attuned to the scent that Cole was tracking and he was smart enough to know what was going to happen once they found him. Surprise was usually the deciding factor in whether or not Cole would get his bounty and Stanford often would “speak” to him by resisting to move forward out of animalistic impulse to remain hidden. The wind which brought Pruitt's scent betrayed that he was not far but Stanford was still moving forward.

Cole took another deep breath when his nose was tickled by a strange aroma—an Omega. He sat taller in his seat, straightening his back as though it would help him see better through the rippling mirages that were beginning to form in the distance. An Omega. Out here. There were no large settlements nearby and, frankly, in the west, Omegas were rare outside of Native villages. He tapped a finger on the side of his holster to calm himself while he pulled up the reins and clicked his tongue for Stanford to revert back into a walk.

This indecisiveness wouldn't do. If Pruitt had an Omega, it meant he had leverage. Cole wasn't about to harm an innocent in his quest. He wasn't heartless, and he wasn't a murderer. If the doctor was willing to rip out Elvira Bergund's beating heart, he was more than likely willing to deny his inner Alpha's drive to protect. The Omega was in danger.

“ _You're not a hero, Harper,_ ” he whispered to himself, his brows knitted tight together.

He rode on, the scent of the Omega becoming more pronounced as he went. It was sharp. Tangy. It stuck in his nose and made his mouth water. There was something _off_ about it. There was too much of _something_ that was in that scent and he could feel his hands tightening and loosening in waves on the reins. It was emotion and sickness and burning desperation. It was most certainly not the scent of a lover.

_The Omega is dying._

“Aw hell,” he growled, kicking Stanford into a hard canter while he drew his gun. He was close. He was close enough that he was mostly certain that he would find Pruitt tucked up and hidden on the far side of a towering rock formation. It was peppered with odd bushes, dry brown grasses, and a few small, gnarled trees. It would have been as good a place as any to hide if the wind hadn't whirled over it, collecting that Alpha scent, mingling it with that of the sickened Omega and delivering it straight through providence to Cole's searching nose. Stanford's bellowing, gusting breaths were all he could hear aside from the thunder of his hooves over the loose dirt and the horse barreled around the rocks as if running straight into battle.

When Cole pulled up on the reins with his gun drawn, Stanford reared slightly, reacting not only to the reins but to the oddly rotted scent that was nearly overwhelming.

“ _Gabriel Pruitt!_ ” Cole roared, his revolver trained upon the Alpha who was knelt over a filled bed roll, his posture protective, offering Cole his back as if his body might stop a bullet. “ _I'll see your hands, Alpha._ ”

Without a word and without even glancing over his shoulder, Pruitt acquiesced, lifting his empty hands, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and his body still poised over what Cole assumed must have been the Omega. The scent in such close quarters was positively dreadful and he wondered how in the world Pruitt might have been able to sit so near to it without retching. There was something to be said for the man's constitution, that was for certain.

“ _You're wanted by the U.S. Marshals in the town of Talton for murder. There's a bounty on your head, dead or alive._ ”

It was this moment that Pruitt turned his head about and stared up at Cole over his broad shoulder, arching one light brow while he asked in a calm, and decidedly mild tone: “I'm unarmed, Alpha. I've no weapons. If you've the mind to shoot me, I'd have you do it and let it be done. If you're of the sort who'd take an Alpha alive, I'd ask that you please allow me to continue my work here.”

_Work?_

Cole growled. “That Omega's dying.”

“And I'm a doctor.”

He almost felt affronted by the statement and he kept his gun trained on the Alpha's back. The logistics of taking an Alpha alive were difficult to work out and now that he was faced with the possibility, the thoughts wouldn't stop tumbling about in his head of all that could go horribly wrong. His pause to think seemed to make Pruitt only annoyed.

“If you're going to stand there and make up your mind, may I at least use my hands? This Omega needs help and _you_ do not have the skills required to assist.”

“ _Use your damned hands,_ ” he snarled back while Stanford pawed impatiently at the dirt, expecting bloodshed.

As Pruitt returned to his task, he cooed and gently shushed, his voice soft and melodic, as if he were no more than a simple Beta. He was giving the Omega something to drink but the bulk of his movements were hidden by his body. Cole watched him work, noting his slow and deliberate motions. Questions started flooding in his brain and overflowed with the most important one coming first.

“She belong to you, Alpha?”

Pruitt sighed. “No. I've no mate. She's from a village not far. Her language is for the most part foreign to me... I'm decent with some parts, but it's got a complicated form.”

“Pick her up.”

Pruitt's glare over his shoulder could have melted iron. “Excuse me?”

“I said, pick her up. I'll have you take her back to her village. There's someone else who can take care of her.”

“No...there isn't. She's expressed that she is not allowed to go back.” He turned his head once again down to his charge and Cole heard a pained moan from the bed roll. “I could not pick her up in her state without risking her harm, anyhow. If you are impatient, Alpha, this will be a trying time for you.”

“And how's that? You can't expect me to stand here for the duration of the time it takes for her to be _cured._ I've got a bounty to collect.”

“I understand,” Pruitt remarked, still shockingly calm in his speech. “But these things take time and I cannot abandon her. She is in need of help and I am qualified to aide her. If that is a bother to you, then you are invited to pull the trigger of that gun—twice if you wish, for she will not last without me. If you are willing to sacrifice the life of this girl for your convenience, by all means, bounty hunter...”

A jagged line of frustration leaned against his sternum and he nearly yelled. “ _Well what the hell is wrong with her, anyway?_ ”

Pruitt's brows lifted while he shifted his body about so that Cole had a clear and unobstructed view of the Omega. Her bronze golden skin was fevered and moist, her sable hair fanned over furs while she lay upon her back. Blood stained the bed roll and the front of Pruitt's shirt and trousers but it wasn't enough to distract the Alpha from the truth of the matter which had eluded him. The beautiful Omega girl's belly was distended and her face screwed up in what must have been intense pain, her fingers digging into the sides of her very pregnant stomach while she whined and whimpered.

“ _Aw hell,_ ” Cole grumbled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a set schedule for this one yet. I know, it's naughty of me not to have one. But I'll be figuring that out about the time I've got _An American Dream_ all finished and posted.
> 
> This story is going to be _graphic_ and _raw_ and _dirty._ That means **rape** , **death** , and **graphic violence**. If that's not your bag, you'd best wait until the next one.
> 
> Like the story? Come chat about it on Tumblr at [J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

If he were honest with himself, Gabriel could only sigh with _relief_ when the man who thundered about the rocks was only the bounty hunter. A man, he could deal with. A man who was sane and controlled even with a gun trained on him was malleable. He could work with that. His greatest concern was not the bounty on his head, and it had not been for the past few days. He'd been forced to run into dangerous territory. The Navajo village had been receptive but careful. They were skeptical of any white man alone without a horse but his fumbling and humored attempts at communication seemed to endear him to them. They gave him water and supplies and he paid them in dried herbs he'd collected and preserved along his journey. Their medicine man had known several words outside their native tongue, those words of a neighboring community that Gabe had more experience with. His warning was dire.

_Cursed land._

The older man had pointed off to the west, toward the dry, dusty mesa. He couldn't stay there. He couldn't put them in danger. He had to go. Before he had, the man had taken his arm and laid into him a stare that held true fear. A fear he was likely loathe to admit. With a single, knowing squeeze, he had let Gabe go. Off into what he knew for certain was a cursed and volatile landscape.

Everything would have been perfectly fine if he had managed to walk far enough before he had stumbled upon the fair Navajo maiden who'd been left in the desert to die. He wished the medicine man had told him of her before he had made his trek. He wished he knew what she was _doing_ out in this hellscape. She had been alone and it had been dusk, the little Omega wandering in nothing but ragged hide, blood in rivulets down her thighs while she hugged herself and sobbed. Her pleas had been mumbled and unintelligible for the most part, at least until he could get her calmed as the moon rose.

Her name was Chooli. She was lost. The village had cast her out. Those were the only tidbits he knew about her. Heavy into labor, she was bleeding and the pup was stubborn. It had taken her only until her second great pang of labor before she would let him spread her legs. Her cervix had not yet fully opened and her breathing was ragged. The long hours of night had her clinging to his shoulders, her nails clawing into his back while she tensed and fought every contraction despite her deep lungfuls of his calming scent and the gentle whispered words he blew into the tiny curve of her ear.

She was dying. It gave him no comfort to hear it from the bounty hunter's lips.

The gray morning had come and Chooli had given up. She stared up at him, her breath shallow and her eyes glassy. Her scent was transitioning into a depressive and rotten odor while she bled and lay limply on his ruined bedroll.

“ _Chooli,_ ” he whispered. “Don't give up.”

She didn't respond.

He leaned over, passing his hand through the bottles and wrapped things that were spilling from his bag until he found an ointment and opened it, taking a generous bit of it into his hands and spreading it over her face and neck.

“Chooli,” he murmured. “You can do this. I need you to gather yourself.”

Distantly, he heard the bounty hunter holster his gun. He'd almost forgotten that the man was even there, sitting atop his impatient and impertinent horse. There was the rustle of a dismount and that gravel-filled deep Alpha tone asked gruffly, “What do you need?”

“If you can make a fire, that would help,” he replied over his shoulder. “There's a packet in my bag, smells like raspberries. Can you find it?”

The unfamiliar Alpha rifled through his bag, his burning scent one of a pine and cedar forest on fire. It was strong enough that it bristled the hair on the back of Gabe's neck with the thought that it was going to stick on anything the hunter touched. He pulled it out and set it aside before he set about crafting a fire, going to every length as quickly as he could.

Gabe focused on Chooli, gently massaging her neck, pressing his thumbs over her scent glands before swiping his fingers to the back of her neck to soothe her. It was the benefit of an Omega's birthing to have such an absolute advantage, though it hadn't done him much good with her. He spoke to the hunter. “Once you have it going, there's water in the skin. I need you to boil it. Put the herbs in the jar I have. It's wrapped in oilcloth. When the water is boiling, pour it over the herbs and let it sit. I don't have time for a sun brew, it'll have to do.”

The Alpha didn't paused in his work but his tone was plying. “Is this some kind of...”

“Witchcraft?” Gabe teased, managing a soft smirk and playing his eyes over the scruffy, dark hunter. “You've done a thorough job of this. I suppose you'd have to know me to find me. But no. It's no witchcraft. It's a simple trick for any midwife.”

“You're no midwife.”

“I do whatever I'm needed to do whenever and wherever it needs to be done. One cannot always have the luxury of a midwife. Especially here. A desperate Omega or Beta woman is the only decision-maker in any household wary of an Alpha doctor delivering their pups. If they will allow it, I will do it.” He moved Chooli to sit up by leaning against him slightly, ignoring her whimper of displeasure. He would need her sitting to take the brew.

When it was done and the hunter had allowed it to sit, the dried leaves and bits of raspberry floating mostly at the top, he took sip or two to test its warmth before he offered it to the shivering Omega. At first, her lips were tight but with a few soothing whispers, he managed to loosen them and she took long, wincing swallows.

“Alright, Chooli,” he breathed. “Let us meet your pup.” He put a hand over her belly but did not push. She whimpered again and her breath caught. It was the longest minute of his life before he felt her uterus contract again. _Hard._

“Ahn!”

“That's right, honey, you've got this. You can do it. Even the bounty hunter thinks you can do it.”

There was a grunt from the direction of his bag.

“Hey!” Gabe frowned, finding the Alpha rifling through his things, tiny glass jars clinking together.

“Just making sure you're as unarmed as you say you are.”

“Those are _valuable._ ”

“Yeah,” the Alpha chuffed. “And breakable, I noticed. Don't get yourself in a twist, you've got a pup to deliver. If she dies, are you going to cut it out of her? I can't watch that, if you are. I'll be sick.”

Gabe started. “Ah...an interesting statement from an Alpha.”

“I'm not afraid to admit it.”

“It's likely, at this point, that the child could be stillborn. It could be the reason she quit pushing. She could feel it die. What we have to do is help her deliver it...alive or otherwise. Now, if you would kindly put my things back in my satchel, you can take my spot and I'll help her deliver.”

Chooli gave another great push, her body tightening with spasms while she yelled out. He switched positions with the hunter and moved between her trembling legs, reaching for his bag and rummaging through it until he found what he needed. He'd already given her some numbing ointment earlier but enough time had passed that it had probably worn off. The girl was tired. She was weak. It would take all her strength left to bring this pup into the world. Making it a little easier was his true goal.

The gruff Alpha cautiously sniffed her. “What did you put on her? She smells...better.”

“It's jasmine, sandalwood, and ginger.” He winked up at the Alpha and grinned. “Witchcraft.”

“What's it supposed to do?”

“It's a power spell with connections to the moon. It aids in motherhood and all that's guided by the Lunar goddess.”

The hunter's mouth opened slightly and his head tipped forward as if he hadn't quite heard correctly. “Is that so?”

“No, you idiot,” Gabe chuckled even as he gently massaged Chooli's lower belly while she pushed. She gripped at the hunter's hands and the sleeves of his coat, weakly pawing at him while she groaned and tried to twist her body, held fast by Gabe's hands. “Come on Chooli. You can do this, you're almost there.”

The Alpha's low tone rumbled while his arms came around her, enveloping her while she grasped at him. “Let's go, baby girl. You've been enough trouble now, you hear? Time to get down to business so I can get down to mine.”

“Comforting,” Gabe mumbled flatly. “Shouldn't be long now, a few more good pushes and we're as good as born down here.”

Chooli pushed, her thighs trembling with her might. Another contraction hit her like a wave and she pushed again with a strangled cry, tossing her head against the Alpha's chest, her long sable locks sticking to her sweaty face. For a second, it looked as though she might not push again but with Gabe's pressing hand upon her belly, she screamed and Gabe's hands were filled with a tiny, limp and bloody pup. He gave out a surprised and elated laugh while he quickly dried the little one of blood and fluid, bringing the babe's nose to his mouth so he could suck out the mucus that blocked it. He spat the plug into the dirt and rubbed hard over the little one's back, up and down to prod him into a cry.

“Come on, little one,” he pleaded. “Come on. _Come on_.”

The hunter was staring at him, engrossed in the outcome whether he had thought he would have been or not. He was still holding the weary Omega, his hand unconsciously moving over her throat to press his thumb and forefinger over her glands in order to massage her. It was a difficult thing to fight against instinct and there was no doubt that the hunter was an Alpha through and through.

Gabe grew impatient with the quiet babe and clapped a harsh slap over the little one's backside, finally able to breathe when his tiny, pinched mouth opened and he released the most feeble of cries. It would have to do. He set the babe down upon Chooli's belly for just a moment before he took off his own shirt and dried him with it. With a piece of twine, he drew shut the bluish cord to his tiny belly in two places.

He looked up at the hunter. “You have a knife handy?”

The hunter reached into his pocket and handed him one, staring with interested eyes at the length of umbilical, wincing a slight amount when it was cut cleanly between the two bits of string.

Chooli's delivery of the afterbirth went as well as it could considering the circumstances, his prodding and massage of her belly doing most of the work even as she weakly pushed until the last of it was out. He applied a bit of Shepard's Purse to stem her bleeding and insisted that she drink the concoction the hunter had mindfully brewed. Tired, she fluttered her lashes against sleep even as Gabe insisted she hold the keening pup but she seemed to have no interest in feeding him, refusing even to support him in her arms.

The desert was beginning to heat up in the early morning and it was only through providence that he'd found them a spot out of it. Shirtless and already sweating, his frustrations were starting to edge through his resolve.

“ _Chooli_ ,” he snapped, his Alpha voice hard in the dry air. Her eyes opened and she gave a gasp. “ _Nurse your son._ ” She couldn't understand the words but the tone of them was enough for her to quickly gather his meaning through the context of her circumstance and scramble for her babe. She put him to her breast with all the naivety of a first mother, struggling with him to get him to latch. Gabe sighed and leaned forward to help her while the hunter tilted his head in order to watch the proceedings, still propping her up with his body.

When the boy was nursing properly and Chooli had finally relaxed again, Gabe sat back, letting the full weight of his exhaustion hit him. He let his eyes shut and he felt the trickle of sweat at his temples and in his hair. Turning his head toward the sky, he put his hands in his lap and simply breathed. The dusty scent of the landscape, the horrid distress of Chooli's endeavor, and a scent that seemed to wash at all of it with its heavy-handed abrasiveness—fire. Soot. _Pine branches prickling and popping in the lick of an open flame._ The scent of an active and unrelenting wildfire.

“I suppose,” the Alpha crooned, “You'll want a change of clothes.”

“Do you have an extra?”

“I do. Though, I could just take you as you are. I've no obligation to a murderer.”

Gabe licked his lips and began putting things back into his bag, carefully organizing everything in the proper manner so that he could have quick access to anything he might have needed later on. “I suppose you wouldn't. I wonder if you would consider yourself as such if you left a fragile Omega in the desert without a keeper?”

“You're not her Alpha.”

“And clearly her Alpha is indisposed at the moment,” he replied, adjusting the sleeping Omega until she was tucked inside the woolen bedroll from the waist down. In truth, he was worried and he knew the hunter could scent it. Her Alpha was missing. She was alone in the world. How easily she had given up, how easily she was still giving up—it was unsettling. In such a place, though—he knew there was darkness here even in the light of day with the full force of the ceaseless sun beating down and glinting over the rocks. There was _something_. He glanced at the horse who had not moved from his spot, his head thoughtfully tilting this way and that, his ears flicking in constant vigilance. He would need it, Gabe thought.

“Don't think about grabbing Stanford while I'm holding up the Miss,” the hunter growled. “He's a fierce fighter and he'll bleed you. I'd rather my prize stay intact when I take you back to the Marshal.”

“You've spoken to the people of Talton.”

“I have.”

“And I suppose you're as keen to see me hang?”

He shrugged slightly, careful not to wake Chooli. “I've no interest in watching you swing. I don't do it for the entertainment, I do it for the money. Whatever Talton wants to do with you—string you up, burn you at the stake, shoot you through the heart, I couldn't care a whit. All I care about is your bounty. And it _is_ a bounty.”

“Don't tell me how much it is. I don't care to know.”

The Alpha tilted his head in appreciation. “You're much different than I thought you'd be. Honest, I thought you'd have her as leverage.” He motioned toward Chooli before he gently rubbed at her neck again.

“An Omega, especially a pregnant mother, is _not_ leverage. No man should be considered leverage. Frankly,” he stated, affronted by the suggestion, “That is _barbaric_.”

“Are you not a barbarian, Dr. Pruitt?”

He winced. “I suppose you ask because of...Elvira.”

“Don't forget her lover, Doctor.”

“Of course. Ned Powell.” He chewed on his bottom lip again. “Well I guess, I don't know. Perhaps.”

“ _Perhaps?_ ” the Alpha raised his brows in disbelief. “The townsfolk who managed to catch a glimpse of the two of them would beg to differ with your ambivalence.”

“They may think what they wish.” He stood. “Are you to allow me a change of clothes or are you to insist that I remain half nude?”

“In the saddlebag to Stanford's right flank. Careful of him, he'll kick you as soon as look at you. And watch his teeth. I've seen him practically flay a man alive. If you get any funny ideas about stealing him, know you'll have a broken neck before you make ten yards.”

There was a brutal truth in the Alpha's words so Gabe made himself as unobtrusive as possible in his approach, pausing a moment when the horse snorted and eyed him, his ears flicking back while he tensed. He murmured to the stallion gently and calmly. “S'alright, Stanford. Whoa, boy. You're alright.” It seemed almost miraculous that Stanford's ears eased a bit and his body language relaxed, even taking a step back before he lowered his head to the rocks, sniffing for something to munch. He rifled through the Alpha's things until he'd fished out a set of trousers and a shirt, neatly rolled to conserve space in his pack. He stripped and dressed, annoyed at the smell of burning that was infused into the cotton fibers but pleasantly surprised to find that he was nearly a perfect fit. As he was fastening his belt, he stared down at the man who was gently running the side of his thumb over the pup's tiny pink head.

“You have children, Alpha?” he asked.

“None that I'm aware of.”

“I'd venture to bet you'd make a fine father.”

He sniffed out a small chuckle. “I have my doubts.” Clear and stinging blue eyes met him, harsh and hard from an exacting life. “I'm not the kind of man to depend upon for an Omega looking to settle.”

“Fair enough. Say...” he let his mouth tilt upward at the side while he gazed down upon the raven-haired Alpha. “I know your horse's name but not yours...should I not know the bounty hunter who finally found me?”

“Cole Harper.”

He nodded. “I can't say I'm glad we've met, Mr. Harper, though it was helpful to have you here for the undertaking.” He frowned, worriedly.

“If you're fretting over whether or not I'm going to allow for a bit of time, you can stop all of that. A few more days isn't going to hurt the price on your head and the little lady needs time to recover.”

He breathed out as if relieved but in reality, his tension and unease was rising at the prospect of staying. _Cursed land._ He moved until he could see the horizon to the east, the mountains blocked by a distant haze. If he hadn't know they were there, it would seem as if the wastes went on forever, as if all he would ever know would be dry dusty flatness and the occasional protuberance of striped rock. There was fear in him. In the rushing light of day, he could not feel safe. Led by good man with a gun on his hip and a fast, violent horse...he could not feel safe. A constant, nagging thought plagued him, eating away at him where he tried to keep it hidden deep inside. As if acid, it wore at him, chewing and dissolving every shred of his defense against it as his eyes flicked and searched in the shimmering mirages beyond the swirling devils.

_We're going to die here. It's going to kill us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hot diggity.
> 
> I will reiterate: This story is not for the faint of heart. We're not shitting sunshine and rainbows. If that's alright with everyone else, then hop right on the Alpha/Alpha fuckwagon. If the "Enemies to Lovers" tag doesn't make much sense with how complacent they are currently, you can just grab a seat 'cause things only get worse from here.
> 
> You're welcome to comment. If you see something and you're like "that's not how horses are" or "_____ isn't accurate" you can tell me but I can't promise you that I'll do fuck-all about it. You're always welcome to tell me though...politely.


	3. Chapter 3

Pruitt was going to be a difficult man to pin down. Despite all of his efforts to remain hidden, he seemed almost guileless. It was a ruse, Cole thought hotly, wondering just how gullible the man might have thought him to be. Still... _still_. The impression made by watching the doctor work with the little maiden and the tiny pup—it was enough to be distracting. He was trapped through his own etiquette under the Omega while she slept and he watched Pruitt staring out into the desert toward the east. Back towards Talton, he thought darkly.

There was only one plan that Cole could decide upon. They stay until the little one was no longer as fragile then he would take Pruitt, at gunpoint if necessary, and walk him all the way back to that damned mining town. If the little one had nowhere to go, that was none of his concern. She had done alright up until this point and she would have to do alright in the days after. If her Alpha couldn't take care of her and her village had ostracized her—well that was none of Cole's concern. Just like how it was none of his concern whether or not Pruitt had actually murdered his betrothed.

_But he hadn't denied it._

When the topic had been broached, Pruitt had been decidedly hesitant but did not profess his innocence. It was a rare moment for Cole. He was used to men begging for their lives and their freedom, insisting that they were innocent. He was sometimes used to men opting for a callous air—admitting to their crimes fully and even out-right bragging of them before they were cut down by his bullet. This? He hadn't been prepared for this.

Pruitt's hands were deep in his pockets while he stood thoughtfully. His voice, soft though edged as an Alpha's voice often was, came over his shoulder. “We should find something for her to eat. She'll be hungry in a little while when she wakes.”

He didn't respond. He was looking down at the baby, latched and suckling still. His eyes were mere slits, his little face like that of a feeble old man. Dark hair whorled on the top of his little head and his mouth worked against his mother's breast. He smelled of his mother, blood, and something new.

“Harper?”

“Fine. Leave your bag and your skin. Take my knife.” He wouldn't risk the doctor slipping off into the desert. Holding his _valuable_ items and his skin of water was the only way he knew for certain the man would come back. It would also be imperative to avoid getting his own knife stuck into his back for his charity. He moved then, gently catching the little Omega and laying her down upon the bedroll completely before he stood up and watched the other Alpha slip the knife into his pocket. “Make sure you come back with enough for us and I'll keep the fire going.”

“Sure,” Pruitt agreed, hesitating just slightly before he took the first of his steps out into the dust and rocks.

When he was certain the doctor was gone, he began building up the fire again, using the dry brush that was stacked to the side. It was something Pruitt must have done earlier. Forethought, intelligence, and a desperation to get away. There was fear in his scent. He could smell it even as the Alpha had tried to hide it. Cole's nose had never _ever_ been fooled by any attempts to mask a scent, difficult as it was. He'd always known. Even the smallest change in temper was enough for him to detect and Pruitt was riddled with a half-hidden terror.

It was common for men to be afraid of the noose. It was expected, even. But this terror was something else and it was difficult for him to put his finger on. It was a violent horror that seemed to hide under every other layer of Pruitt's aroma and it was difficult to determine its exact nature with all the other scents about—especially the Omega. It could have been the humiliation of being walked back into Talton. It could be the thought of standing in front of neighbors and patients with a rope around his neck. It could be that payment to the devil was due...that was, if witchcraft was really the Alpha's trade.

_“No, you idiot.”_

He tightened his lips. Even in the midst of a difficult birth, Pruitt had relished his ignorance. If it was a test to determine whether or not Cole was gullible—he'd failed it. He was most certainly more gullible than he'd hoped to portray and it was stinging him just as mightily as if he'd been stung by a hornet.

He wandered the small encampment after he'd taken the saddle and bags off of Stanford, looking at it from every angle until he was satisfied that he knew the lay of it. There were two entrances into a little space between two rock formations. One was large enough that two or three horses could have stood side by side in the entryway. The other was only large enough for one. Though it was easy to look above some of the rocks that made up the eastern wall, the western one was much too tall, towering at least ten to fifteen feet in some places. It was a space that was well-chosen for an alpha to take refuge though he had to admit, he would have found the doctor with or without the Omega's scent to guide him. If Pruitt had stayed put here, he could have very well been a dead man had he been alone. Undetectable at a distance, it was only too obvious that there was someone hidden if one were to venture close enough.

_No. It would only have been obvious to me. My nose._

His absurd sense of smell was what could have done it. Pruitt's leather and earth Alpha scent was less prominent than most and he knew plenty of bounty hunters would have been entirely fooled if they had used tracking alone to help them—without the Omega, without a burning scent...the doctor could have hidden for a long time. There wasn't much he couldn't do with it and normally, _usually_ , he could scent a lie.

_“It's a power spell with connections to the moon. It aids in motherhood and all that's guided by the Lunar goddess.”_

It wasn't a lie. Pruitt had _believed_ what he had said.

Cole's emotions on the subject were mixed. Magic? Such things didn't exist. The only thing that made magic seem real were people willing to believe in it. A doctor...an educated man...for sure he couldn't have been anything else. He was no charlatan, that was for certain with the way he delivered that pup. He believed in _magic_. The whole concept was nearly beyond his comprehension. How could a man with such a background believe in magic? Had he somehow been corrupted by the Indians? Had they convinced him of their power somehow through some strange ceremony?

He was distracted by the soft sound of a tiny cry and he wandered back to where the Omega lay to find that the babe was restless, squirming in Pruitt's shirt. Chooli—that's what Pruitt had called her—was stirring and she sat up gingerly. Her scent was still sick though not as horribly as it had been. Her eyes were glassy and she held the newborn as if he were some kind of strange animal, setting him down on his back next to her on the bedroll, almost as if she were disgusted by him and confused by him...as if she claimed no ownership. Cole moved toward her and she flinched away from him, making no sound of protest when he leaned over and plucked up the pup. In fact, she seemed disinterested in whatever he was going to do, laying back down and rolling onto her side away from him while the child cried.

He crooned, his voice low and vibrating. “What's wrong, pup? You've got enough milk in your belly, I think. Mayhap you've got a bubble in there.” He placed the little one against his chest and held him there with a steady arm, tapping him upon his back while he very carefully spread his scent over him. Mingling Alpha scents normally warred and sparked, scorching through the senses, but he and Pruitt's did no such thing, blending as if they belonged to one Alpha instead of two. He hummed, the only tune he could remember being an old and bawdy tavern ballad. He thought he might forgo the lyrics—they weren't fit for human ears, much less barely day-old babes.

Eventually, the humming and patting did their work and the babe was once again asleep, held in his big arms and by his big hands. Sinfully small and lacking in his own scent. Perhaps that was the problem...perhaps he smelled too much like _them_ and not enough like _her._ He glanced over at the Omega who had fallen asleep again and then around them at the camp. The fire was controlled and low and there was a river not far. He still had a bar of decent soap from the last inn where he'd stayed and the babe was as soiled as Pruitt's shirt...he needed a wash.

Cole lifted his head and wandered to the eastern side of the rock formation, jumping effortlessly upon the “wall” and scenting deeply. Pruitt was more than fifty yards away from him and was likely to the southwest. The river was to the southeast. He grabbed his hat, his toiletries, and an extra blanket out of his saddle bag and then began walking, shielding the pup from the sun while he went.

The river was probably more a river at a different time of the year and was more a trickling stream now, most of it dried up with a cracked and sterile bed. The water was warmed from the soil and the sun despite having been moving along and the pup didn't object to it. With finesse, he was able to not only wash the little one but also Pruitt's shirt. With the pup clean and wrapped in the blanket, he draped the shirt over his shoulder and wandered back to camp. The whole ordeal had taken probably half an hour and Pruitt was back already, having laid out three rather large rattlesnakes next to the fire.

“Well color me impressed, Dr. Pruitt.”

The doctor smiled at him, preening at the praise. “A long time ago, I figured out their pattern of movement. It works with most rattlesnakes.”

“I see. And my knife?”

He pulled it from his pocket and held it out with the handle toward Cole, unmoving and still smiling while the hunter took it back. “I see you've cleaned up the little one. That's good.”

“I had the thought that perhaps he doesn't smell enough like she does. I tried not to scent him too much while I was on my way back...”

“She's still got no interest in him?” Pruitt's scent and expression was tilted toward concern, that bizarre horror still buried at the bottom of his emotions and still so _fucking_ obvious to Cole's sensitive nose. “It's worth a try, at least. If she's got no motherly instinct, she's a rare Omega indeed. I've never seen anything like that before.” A dust devil whirled until it hit the edge of the eastern rocks and then dissipated, the remnants of stray gusts rippling through Pruitt's fair hair and he turned around to save his eyes from any of the dust or sand that was kicked up. “We'd better wake her, then. Before we manage to get him all fouled up with our scent.”

Chooli wanted no part of it. In fact, she didn't even want to get up to see him, much less scent him or give her scent to him. She pushed at him to get him away from her until Pruitt was forced to use his _Alpha_ voice with her again to place him to her breast for feeding. She held him as if she were a stone edifice, unfeeling and unmoving. Open with purpose but without emotion. Loveless. It was enough to make Cole feel almost sick to his stomach.

“She's not right,” he muttered, close to the doctor's ear. “There's something wrong about her.”

“She's sick,” Pruitt replied. “And I don't know how to help her. It's not bleeding...it's a...a sickness of the heart.”

“Your medicine men don't have anything for that?”

The doctor gave him a derisive eye roll. “For the _heart_ yes. For the type of sickness...no. There are some things that are said to lift mood but...not like this. They're meant for things like everyday melancholy. Not... _this_. There is an herb she could have but I...I don't have any. After all, you _did_ mention that I am _not_ a midwife...not to mention, it could make her bleed out faster than it could make her wish to remain a mother.” He crossed his arms and his brow was pinched quizzically.

Cole watched him and wished he had a cigarette. “Pruitt,” he murmured, “you are a strange man.”

“Why's that?”

He shrugged. “All this time.”

“All this time?”

“Yeah. You've been runnin'. From me. You've been smart, you've been sly, you've been dippin' all over the place, getting people to do what you want...is this how you do it?”

The doctor grinned and looked at him. “You think this is some kind of a trick? Me and the Omega?”

“No...no...the Omega's real. She's different. She's an outsider. What I mean is you. This...this _face_ , this _persona._ You. As a kind, gentle doctor. You're hiding a beast inside you, Dr. Pruitt...whoever you are.”

The doctor let out a small chuckle, genuinely smiling at the accusation as if it meant nothing. “Oh Mr. Harper... We're Alphas. We're all beasts inside.”

“I'm not.”

“Hah. You think you're immune? That's precious of you. I sincerely hope you never have to learn otherwise.” He took a few steps away and knelt, picking up a snake and staring up at Cole expectantly. It was obvious he'd like to have had the knife back in order to prepare them but the hunter would rather have kept it with himself.

Cole sat next to the fire and began to skin the already decapitated snakes, wondering aloud. “What'd you do with the heads, Doctor?”

“What?”

“The heads. Of the snakes.”

There was a long pause and Cole turned his head to stare up at Pruitt who was still standing with his arms crossed, his gray eyes squinted against the sun. The Doctor blinked. “You think I'll poison you. While you sleep.” It wasn't a question and when Cole didn't answer, Pruitt shifted where he stood. “Very well...if you stay here, I'll find them for you. I think I remember where they are.”

Cole muttered something that to his own ears sounded a little like “good.” There wasn't enough to worry about? Rattlesnake venom in the middle of the night? A disembodied head with sharp fangs sinking into his neck while he was lost in slumber? That wasn't exactly the way he thought he might have died in this godforsaken land but it certainly did seem quite possible with Pruitt knocking about the way he was—a goddamned _witch_. He muttered some more oaths under his breath while he peeled the skin off the first snake and gutted it with deft fingers, laying the meat aside on top of a flat rock. He did the same with the other two and was in the middle of gutting the last one when Pruitt returned, sweat on his brow and his scent thick with that same hidden horror, but this time it was frothing and welling over.

Cole felt his heart start beating a little faster, an alert tension tightening his muscles at the scent of that now-familiar fear. “Well?” he asked, willing his voice not to shake, tight as it was.

“I...I couldn't find them. I must have...misremembered where I killed the snakes...”

Frustration bled out and ignited while the hunter stood, rounding upon Pruitt who took a prudent step back. “ _Why don't I believe you, Alpha?_ ” he asked. “You've conveniently _forgotten_ where you left the heads? Are you _afraid_ of me, Alpha? Are you nervous about killing me? Is that what that is that I smell in your _stink?_ ” He heard Stanford grow restless, lifting his head and eying the two of them with his ears laid flat back, his tail whipping once to the side while he snorted out a warning. He was no stranger to Cole's anger and where there was a fight to be had, he was ready and willing.

Pruitt lifted his hands. “I swear to you, Harper. I swear it. I thought I knew...I even found the blood...but I'd tossed the heads. I hadn't wanted to accidentally prick myself. I don't know where they could have gone, I swear to you.” His gray eyes flicked to Stanford and he took another step back from the horse. An Alpha's strength could take on plenty of opponents but a horse? It would be a challenge and a half to predict what the animal could do. “I swear...I—”

“Fine.” He took in a deep, calming breath, smoothing his scent and burying every frustration under a layer of cool unemotional soil. “That's fine. It's all fine.” The babe began to hiccup and cry, held in his mother's arms less like a pup and more like a bag of refuse. “ _For the love of Christ_ ,” he bellowed, snapping his head toward the girl who rapidly pulled the pup to her chest. It was the first motion she'd made to at least protect him and for that, he couldn't even be angry at himself for having caused it. He let the moment linger for a few moments, forcing the girl to recognize that she had done it as she faded out of the effects of his _Alpha_ tone. When she didn't pull the babe away from her, he turned his attention to fashioning a cooking spit and when Pruitt moved to assist, he put up a finger. “I recommend you keep your distance from me, Alpha. I swear to God, I'll take half your bounty if it means I get to stay above ground.”

With nothing left for him to do, Pruitt put his hands in his pockets and sat in one of the small amounts of shade. Cole watched him from the corner of his eye as he set the snakes cooking and moved to his saddlebag to set up his camp—consisting of a small and simple shelter of thick oiled cloth with two poles staked into the ground for a crude lean-to. It would keep him out of the sun, at least, and it would cut the wind a little more than the rocks could, keeping him from the sting of any wayward dust that spilled over the walls. He unrolled his bedroll under it and then went to check on the meat.

They ate as the day slipped on and somewhere around four, he went out for a wander, leaving Stanford in charge of Pruitt and the girl, confident that the horse would be hyper-aware of every movement the unfamiliar Alpha made. He spotted a hare which he quickly put down for their dinner with one dexterous shot, wishing that he'd managed to procure himself a bow for the sake of discretion. The other animals would surely scurry at the sound and he had to find more than just for himself this time. It took him at least another hour to come across another hare, brave or stupid. The rest of the time, as the sun was starting to sink in the western sky, he studied the tracks over the rocks and sands, able to see the basic jist of where animals trekked and converged as well as where Pruitt had wandered about, his steps quick, light, and mostly with his weight centered on the balls of his feet, as if constantly sneaking.

He followed the tracks casually, losing them at points where the rocks and foliage were more prominent but picking them up where he could until he found the point where blood marred the pale of the stones among a crop of cacti. He tilted his head to find where a flat rock provided a small amount of space in which a rattler or three could have hidden. Blood marked the nearly perfect flat top of it, smears and patterns suggesting the placement of their bodies during decapitation. His eyes scanned the surrounding foliage and rocks. The doctor would not have thrown them far. In fact, it seemed almost as though he should have simply left them upon the flat stone. He circled it, searching in vain, he knew, for those elusive little bits of snake.

_He's hidden them. Close to camp. He'll fetch them in full night and he'll do what it takes to survive._

The most sinister portion of the plot was Pruitt's _patience._ He had all the time in the world. Every moment he spent in the wilderness with Cole was a moment he could formulate his escape. It was another moment that he could determine exactly how he was going to kill the bounty hunter who'd promised to take him back to Talton to see him hang for his crimes.

_There's an easy way to solve this._

He nodded to himself while he walked back to camp, comfortable in his resolution. He wasn't going to kill the Alpha if he didn't have to, though he wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in him. A good amount of a rope and some basic creativity could go a long way if he was careful.

Chooli was on her side, the babe snuggled against her in his blankets, laying on his back in the shade. Pruitt was tending the fire and looked up at Cole's appearance, his scent back to normal and still slightly polluted. The very idea of its origin put metallic ire in the hunter's mind, a blade that was stuck in the stone of his consciousness. The doctor was _afraid_ to kill him. Afraid to kill? Or afraid to _fail?_

He tossed the rabbits on the ground and then sat, beginning the work of skinning and gutting. His graveled voice sounded foreign to his own ears.

“You know how to tan a skin?”

Pruitt's mouth flattened, curving at the side while his brows furrowed as if he were insulted by the question. “What do you take me for, Mr. Harper? Don't put too many holes in it before you give it to me.”

When he handed them over, Pruitt seemed satisfied and laid them out in the sun on a rock, stretching them out as far as he could get them. When their supper was ready, such as it was, the doctor convinced Chooli to eat more than she had of the snake and coaxed her, this time gently, into feeding the restless pup. When he got up with the babe after his feeding to wash him, Cole followed along at a decent distance, watching the doctor work. What he was really looking for was a _tell_. There was no way that an Alpha planning a murder wouldn't glance even for a second at the place where he'd hidden the element most necessary for his plan to succeed. But Pruitt didn't give anything away. His gaze scanned the whole of the desert in turn, as if looking for someone who might be watching him...who wasn't the bounty hunter.

_An accomplice? Impossible. There was no scent._

He watched the Alpha wash the babe and the blanket as the sun sank low, splashing the open expanse with pinks and reds and oranges while the coyotes began their primitive howl. He brought Stanford to the river and made sure he was refreshed and fed, the stallion taking a moment to channel his inner colt for a few minutes while he splashed into the trickling water. When they came back to camp, Chooli got up and left them there, presumably to wash herself, skittering around them as if they were diseased and scampering off in her bare feet.. He took the opportunity to go to the saddle bags and remove a length of strong rope.

“Lay the pup down, Dr. Pruitt,” he growled.

“Sorry?” His glance was curious at first and alarmed the next. “Wait...”

“I'll not compromise on this, Alpha. If you're going to survive the night, you're going to do it under my conditions. I won't leave you like this come morn, I just can't have you putting me down in my sleep.”

He gave a breathy chuckle, incredulous even now. “I...I understand your fear, Harper...but...”

“I won't say it again,” he warned, placing a threatening hand upon the butt of his gun. “Lay the babe down. I want you on your stomach, on the ground with your hands behind ya.”

“You can't be serious, how do you expect me to sleep?”

“Ain't none of my business how you care to get it done. If you want to sleep during the day, that's your own concern and none of mine. But night? You get tied.”

“Oh for the love of Pete...” the doctor mumbled mildly, setting the pup down gently on Cole's bedroll before he looked around for a decent spot and then laid down in the dust. “I suppose I understand what could make you driven to do this...” he grumbled while Cole wrapped his wrists, stringing the rope as to hog-tie him with his wrists connected to his legs just under his knees. It was a position that even the strongest Alpha would be challenged to escape, the amount of momentum required from _Alpha_ strength impossible to achieve. It would do well to keep a man like Gabe Pruitt overnight.

Unwilling to have the man suffocate, he tipped Pruitt over so that he was on his side, unaffected by the chilling glare the man cast up at him. He outfitted the surly doctor with a blanket over top him before he picked up the pup and carried the sleepy little thing about with him as he got himself ready to sleep. It was only about a half hour later, as a sliver of moon hid behind a stray cloud, Chooli returned, still avoiding both of them.

“Girl,” he barked.

She turned but didn't look at him, her eyes downcast and submissive as natural as an Omega could be. Her long black hair tumbled forward as she tilted her head, shielding her glittering eyes in the firelight.

“Take your pup.” Even if she couldn't understand his words, she understood that he was holding out the little one and she took him as her upper lip curled with distaste. “God,” he mumbled as he turned away from her toward his own bedroll, desperate for a good night of shut-eye. “You are _strange._ ”

When he was finally tucked into his own bedroll, he turned his back from the dimming fire and shut his eyes, letting the music of distant desert dogs lull his buzzing mind into a swaying and pleasant corner of his subconscious. He had not slept _fully_ and _completely_ for so many nights that when he finally found this scarce solace, it was as if a thousand weights were lifted from his soul...the weight of being _human_ suddenly vanished.

And still something followed him into the dark. A scent. A knowledge that was hidden behind a black tulle veil.

_Something. Something. Something._

_Something is here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next Stop:** _The Twilight Zone._
> 
> Comments/Questions/Concerns? Liking this story so far? Interested in Alpha/Alpha? Do you like Gabe and Cole? Love Stanford? ~~(There's no other option there, you're obligated to love Stanford.)~~ Share some thoughts with me! Comments make stories more exciting to write and to read!


	4. Chapter 4

It was a stink that woke Gabe from his fitful sleep and at first, it confused him. The sun was just barely peeking over the horizon and his foggy mind hadn't had enough rest to snap quickly toward consciousness. He was still half in a dream. There was a _softness_ about the world as if nothing were completely real. As if he weren't actually _himself_ even. As if he didn't belong to his body. But the stench was there. It was overpowering and real and tangible, tingling in his nose and causing him to flinch and remember that the damned bounty hunter had bound his hands to his calves. The ache of his wrists and back reminded him in no uncertain terms that he was to remain this way at least until Harper woke.

He took a deeper breath, tilting his head about and recognizing the scent. _Horror_.

_Chooli._

He winced against the thought, his eyes wide as he shook off the remnants of his slumber and used whatever slight momentum he could gather to twist himself to look over at her. He could barely manage the action, the muscles in his neck straining from the unnatural form he took to twist while anxiety roiled in his gut. His hands were bound. He was useless and imprisoned.

“ _Choo_ _li_ _?_ ” he whispered urgently, his eyes flitting about in an effort to see her. Just a few more inches of adjustment and surely he could manage to look at her. Surely she would be just where they had left her. The scent was too strong for her to be anywhere else. “ _Choo_ _li_ _!?_ ” he hissed. She did not respond so he willed himself to worm a few more inches under the thick blanket Cole had dropped on him.

When he caught his first glimpse of her, he froze, his mouth dropping in silent shock. At first, he thought his mind must have been playing a trick upon him. Surely. Surely he was still _dreaming_. Though what a dream. What a _nightmare_. The fog in his eyes was clearing with every blink he took to try to dispel the image and the resounding ringing that plagued his ear drums, chimes that rang and rang and rang in this peculiar lurid dream—it could not be anything else—maddened him until he found himself shaking in the dust. He could feel a scream in his throat but it refused to release, mounting until he could no longer hold it and it fell out of him as a throaty, bizarre groan that sent gooseflesh over the whole of his body, giving voice to the growing sense of surreal absurdity.

There was movement from Harper's bedroll, the hunter stirring at the sound Gabe had loosened from his lips and when the Alpha sat up groggily from his sleep and caught a glimpse of the doctor and turned to Chooli— _to Chooli and...and!?!?!?!_ —he moved quickly, flipping out of his position and into a ready kneel, his scent alert and vastly confused. His mutter was trembling and half-formed. “ _What in God's name..._ ”

_I'm not dreaming. I'm not dreaming. I'm. Not. Dreaming._

“Harper!” he barked, “Untie me! _Now!_ ”

The Alpha dove toward him, ripping off the heavy blanket that was over him and working the rope that bound him until it became slack so Gabe could move freely. Shedding the rest of the rope, he sat up and got to his hands and knees, staring hard at the way Chooli's glassy eyes were fixed.

He cooed gently even as his heart pounded hard in his chest. He could feel it in his throat, hear it rushing in his ears. “Chooli. Don't move. Don't move, Omega. _Not a twitch_.” He eased toward her, trying to keep his body as small as possible even as the beady black eyes of the gila monster focused upon him, the ominous black and orange creature curled into a 'C' shape, defensive and alert. Where her pup should have sat, right upon her soft belly—it stared upward, hissing with warning. It flicked its black tongue out while it watched his approach.

“Pruitt,” Harper said and the doctor turned to find the man holding out a short stick. He took it, turning back around to find the creature with its mouth open, threatening and aggressive, it's spiny little black teeth in a perfect row around its sinister black tongue.

Gabe drew a hard breath and wasted no more time, bringing the stick to the monster's face until it lunged for it. Even as Chooli screamed and flinched, Gabe had the beast about it's thick neck, his fingers tight as the thing chewed and gnawed in an impotent attempt to poison and consume. The girl rolled away, screaming and sobbing and jabbering on in her native tongue, stringing words together with venom and spit, yelling hysterically at the creature in Gabe's fist, pointing to it and screaming, her eyes glinting with madness and her scent heavy with terror.

Harper stood, staring at the girl who backed away in her bare feet over the dust and the rocks, picking her way backwards while she continued to gesture and scream at the gila monster, tears coursing in small rivers down her cheeks while her voice cracked and rasped. The hunter's voice was raw with his confusion and obvious shock.

“ _Where's the pup?_ ”

Gabe felt his heart again leap into his throat while he snapped his eyes to the ground and to the bedroll where the girl had slept. Gone. His nose perked and he took in long breaths of scent but a babe didn't have much scent. It wasn't until they were older that they developed a Beta-type mildness before their presentation. He wouldn't be able to sniff out a mere pup and he didn't know any of Chooli's Navajo language enough to ask her what had become of him. He looked up at her with the question in his mouth, his throat poised to boom loud in _Alpha_ tone.

But he stopped. Paused. Turned his head to Harper.

“I...I think she thinks...”

Harper breathed it, ending the sentence as he'd come to the same conclusion. “That the lizard is her pup.” His scent darkened as the confusion slipped away, replaced by a cool and flat emotion that was unsettling to say the least. “Unless it's a trick.”

“What?” Gabe asked, his eyes wide and searching over the Alpha's face. “Where would she have stashed him? Why? What could possibly be her motive? How could she have put the lizard upon herself? How could she have manufactured her fear?”

“I'm sure I don't know what she's capable of.”

“No...no...” He felt himself begin to breathe harder and shallower. “No...it's...it's...” He caught himself, transforming his breathing into deeper, soulful swoops of air that managed to calm him until he could think properly. Chooli's screams were like a constant buzzing, as if a fly were trapped in his inner ear. He looked back at the gila monster in his hand and he nodded to himself. “I'm going to get rid of this...”

Harper made no argument against the suggestion so Gabe wandered off, watching where he stepped to avoid any other poisonous reptiles on his way. Chooli's incoherent yelling faded and eventually he found a good place to toss the impressively sized lizard. It was weighty and probably just as large as the newborn had been.

Gabe wanted to pretend as if he didn't know what had happened. He wanted to think that somehow she had stashed the little one in the middle of the night in order to trick them into something. But that's not how it worked. That wasn't how things happened in this desert. This _cursed land._ He shivered as he watched the gila monster scurry off after being released, hiding himself under the shade of a cactus.

_It took him. It wanted him so it took him._

He wandered back to the camp and put his hands in his pockets again while he came upon an odd sight. Harper had gathered Chooli into his arms and he was standing with her cradled against his chest while she clung to his neck, her face in his shoulder while she sobbed and he paced with her, gently shushing with his cheek against her messy sable hair. The desert was coming awake and the sky was a strange colorless hue as the sun rose, obscured only by the haze. The mountains to the east were nearly clear, tinted barely blue and rising ominously from the general flat of the Earth.

He cleared his throat and took a step back when Stanford pawed at the ground to his right, blowing from his nose with his intense gaze focused solely upon him. The horse's skepticism was warranted, surely, as Harper was vulnerable with an Omega in his arms. Gabe raised his hands from his pockets and took a few steps backward, speaking only when Harper's cold eyes settled upon him.

“The girl...” He swallowed. “She should...go back. To the village. The babe could have been why she was left out here. If she doesn't have him...she might be able to go back. It would explain his disappearance...if she _did_ make him disappear.”

“That's cold, Pruitt. That a mother could do that to her own pup?”

“It was _your_ suggestion that she did it.”

Harper made a small “tsk” sound while he paced with her, bobbing her up and down while he moved a hand to her neck and rubbed her. “Sure. We bring her back. What happens if they don't take her?”

Gabe shrugged one shoulder, uncertain. “I guess...she comes with us.”

Harper growled. “I'm not dragging her with me. It's no skin off your back but what about me? You don't have any reason to care about what happens from here on—you'll be dead in a few weeks. Shorter if you're lucky.”

Annoyance pinged through his heart along with the trails of a darkness that lingered there. “Am I the only man who'll find worth in her? And I'm destined for the gallows? You can't abandon her, Harper...that's not who you are...is it?”

“Isn't it? Aside, who are you to become sanctimonious? Spare me.”

He wanted to argue it but found the words stuck in his throat. Who _was_ he? He'd no right to tell Harper what to do, that was for certain. “Fine. We'll deal with the outcome when it arises. Or... _y_ _ou_ will. I've got no say in the matter...or any matter.” It stung him to acknowledge it. It wasn't everyday that a man truly admitted he'd no more autonomy over his own life. An Alpha walking toward his death with a gun to his back didn't make a lot of sense when it came right down to it and Harper must have known that. _Sooner if you're lucky_. An Alpha paraded freely through the desert to be hanged for murder wasn't something that anyone could expect to see in their lifetimes...but Gabe wasn't a common Alpha.

He'd no intention of walking back into Talton with a gun to his back. If fate was kind, whatever was in the desert was content with what it had taken from them and Gabe would slip away. As awful as it was, the reality of life and death in the west was something that must be dealt with in a terribly _aloof_ sort of manner. Harper seemed adept at the practice and Gabe, for the most part, was alright at remaining unaffected. He'd seen plenty of death in his time. He'd had pups stillborn in his arms. He'd seen them waste away from disease before his very eyes. The pox took many of them...just born and otherwise. He'd never seen any taken by... _whatever_. Demons? Spirits? Entities of evil? He would hate to give it a name. It was too unformed in his mind—a vague presence that he _felt_ more than anything else. It was a pin prick in his senses and it was there all the time. If he did manage to slip away from Harper's clutches, he was determined to head north. Hopefully the _thing_ would leave him alone in his travels.

_But how can I get away? How can I survive? What if I have to kill him?_

There were too many questions. The first order of business was to make certain that Chooli was safe. Aside from that, he would have to improvise. He looked down at his bedroll, soiled and smelly. He announced his intention to wash it and was met with indifference.

He walked to the river, keeping his steps light. Something was watching him. He'd known it subconsciously for the whole of the morning even through his distraction. When he became conscious of it, he sniffed the air cautiously, searching for any human scent. He found none. So far, the presence had kept its distance. Now, it was closer. Gabe looked about and couldn't see anything out of place but knew the _thing_ was close...and was likely getting closer. It was insidious and coiled in the wilderness, whatever it was. Every so often as he walked, he would break out into gooseflesh and he would know that the _thing_ was following him. It had been happening since he had left the village and it had put him on edge the whole of the time. It could only grow worse.

He finished his task as quickly as possible and was relieved that it didn't take long. As it dried in the sun, Harper made certain that Stanford was saddled again, packing all of his things into the saddle bags and rolling up his own roll, breaking up camp while Chooli watched, curious, stepping around him as he worked and eventually make her way toward Stanford's head, the stallion seemingly ambivalent of her.

Her tiny hands came to his ears and Gabe watched her scratch him, smoothing her palms over his mane and his neck while he was leaned down to sniff at some dry grasses. He nickered softly at her, lifting his head to nudge her a little bit until she moved how he wanted her to, her short fingernails trailing over him until she was petting his nose with the backs of her fingers.

“Watch yourself, girl,” Harper muttered half-heartedly. As much as the hunter would have liked the horse to strike fear into the hearts of anyone they came across, it would have been difficult to convince Chooli of Stanford's innate aggression. His ears were forward and his posture almost friendly toward her as she kissed him right between his eyes and whispered at him in Navajo.

I would take them only a few hours to reach the village and when they were all packed and ready, Cole lifted Chooli upon Stanford's saddle, her legs both dangling off one side while she gripped the horn to steady herself, her tiny body practically sliding about as the horse walked. She was much too sensitive to ride with her legs apart and made a few adjustments as she rode and the two Alphas walked until she was comfortable enough to remain seated. Harper forced Gabe to walk in front of him so the doctor did, still contemplating how in the world he was going to make his great escape.

There was no doubt that the village wouldn't allow them to remain for the night. There was too much ill-will between the tribes and the anglos for them to suffer the presence of a _bounty hunter_ for a whole of a night. Gabe, having been alone, had been an exception of sorts though they were still wary of him. Their relationship with the United States and the men of the government had been a struggle at best and a travesty at worst. Any undo trespass within their territories was something Gabe honestly wished to avoid as well as possible. They would have to make camp outside the boundaries of the village and there was no doubt in his mind that he would be bound again with Harper's length of rope. It was something he could not take lightly. Helpless and restrained, he was at the mercy of whomever could untie him. It was not an enviable position for an Alpha by any means.

It meant that he would have to somehow make his escape while Harper was otherwise engaged. Or while he was dead. It wasn't ideal. None of this was ideal.

_I can't kill a man._

Was that even true? How far could he go to lie to himself. Was it that Harper was innocent? Surely he wasn't entirely free of wrongdoing but even then—could Gabe bring himself to do harm? _Who are you to become sanctimonious? Spare me._

_God,_ he thought. _Who am I? What have I done?_

Tall rocks jutted out of an otherwise flat landscape under a stretched out blue sky, faint wisps of clouds barely visible every so often. They wound through lightly used thin trails that were probably those made by burros and other animals. Gabe traced the ground and the sides of the trail with quick eyes to search for rattle snakes or anything else that might nip at Stanford's hooves. When they sat down to rest for a little while, he worked on the hare skins that Harper had given him, working the brains he'd saved over the hides until they'd had enough. He could work them and smoke them but he wondered what exactly Harper meant to do with them.

“I suppose,” Gabe muttered while Harper cut Chooli off a bit of preserved jerky for a small lunch, “You'll sell these to someone in Talton.”

“Whomever.”

Gabe let the moment linger for a while. “I suppose you don't dream, do you, Harper? Men like you don't dream, do they?”

Cold blue eyes focused tightly on him.

“Men who've made a living from violence... You can't dream. Or...you wish you didn't.”

Harper's voice was rough. “A woman called McGregor told me that you used to ask about her dreams. I don't take stock in dreams.”

“What is reality then? But a dream?”

“I guess you'll have to tell me after you wake up.”

“Can you speak to the people in your dreams, Harper? Do you think I'll be able to speak to you? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Shut up.”

Gabe cast his eyes toward the ground before he packed up the hare furs and stood while Harper readied Chooli. There was no point in poking the beast and inciting the wrath of a sleeping bear. Surely the man could feel the strangeness of the world around them, the way everything seemed to waver like some kind of mirage. Maybe though...maybe it was only him. After all, if reality really was only a dream, then it was subject to the whims of perception. Nervousness put a small jitter through him and he held the strap of his bag tight. There was only so much he could do to protect himself and most of it was an uncertain protection. Harper he could handle. Harper, a flesh and blood man, he could deal with rationally. The bounty hunter had a clear motive and was unabashedly going to pursue it. It was the strangeness that frightened him.

They walked through the beating sun until late afternoon. Their arrival at the edge of the village spread and the elder who'd previously spoken with Gabe was brought to him along with another man, taller and younger than the medicine man. One who had not been present before, he was tall with broad shoulders and around him was a light-looking woven blanket of reds and blacks. He surprised Gabe mightily when he greeted them in near-perfect English, the Alpha's voice smooth as silt and pleasing to the ear in his enunciation.

“My father has told me that you are a doctor. I am Ahiga.” He made no more introduction than that, his wariness a cause for indecisiveness at his welcome. His dark brown eyes slipped over Harper, considering his lenient stance as nonthreatening before he gave a pensive expression to Stanford and Chooli. “I have been gone to a council meeting with the elders of neighboring clans and I come back to find that you've brought us back our Chooli.” He scented the air, his eyes narrowing at her severely. “She has not been claimed.”

Gabe shook his head. “No. I've no experience in the language of your people...I could not quite understand her though she was in great distress.”

“She was to have a pup,” he replied flatly.

“Is she welcome here?” Gabe ventured, flicking his eyes to the way Chooli sat in the saddle, her eyes downcast and her posture submissive. “If she is not then we will surely take her with us...”

“It would be dangerous for you to take her. My father and the rest of us will tend to her.”

Harper moved forward, unassuming as he spoke. “You're not curious as to the pup?”

Ahiga frowned. “It is not with you. It is dead. I have nothing to wonder about.” He turned and addressed Gabe while he slowly walked in toward the village. “My father tells that you are one who knows some about medicine. Of...our kind.”

“Only some,” he offered. “I am not well-versed in any area though it is enough for the settlements to find me...odd.”

“A stranger in your own people.” Ahiga glanced back toward Stanford and Chooli. “You and the Omega would find common ground.”

“She speaks your tongue but I found her in hides.”

“You make good observations. My father told me your name is Gabriel.”

“It is. And this is Cole Harper. He's a...”

Ahiga raised a brow at Harper, the side of his nose raising in a sniff. “I know what he is. Perhaps it is good that you have come and returned Chooli to us. You must stay to talk with me though you should not be in the village after sun-down. You have been through the ruins, though you do not know it.”

Gabe glanced back at Harper and wondered how far the Alpha would go to humor him. He lowered his voice and leaned toward Ahiga. “There is something in the desert.”

“Yes,” Ahiga acknowledged. “There is.”

“Will it follow?”

The man seemed to contemplate the question, his lips pursed and his gaze fixed while they wandered toward a summer hogan. “It is possible.”

The response was not in any way unexpected but it still forced a deep chasm to open up in Gabe's stomach. He tried to dampen the fear that bled into his scent but it was of no use. Harper had already scented it though he did not speak.

Ahiga spoke to some others in his native tongue and they came toward Stanford, hesitating when the horse flattened his ears and lifted his front hoof to paw. The Navajo Alpha chuckled as Harper clicked his tongue at the horse so that the others could help Chooli from the saddle, guiding her toward a larger hogan Gabe understood as the medicine house. Ahiga smiled. “A spirited friend.”

“Hardly a friend,” Harper grumbled.

“You underestimate him.” He chuckled again as if taking delight in Harper's ignorance and Gabe couldn't help but like him, hiding his smile from the irritated bounty hunter. He moved aside the old blanket the served as the door to the hogan and turned to Harper. “The horses are tied around to the north end of the village.” With that, he gave the hunter no recourse for retort and allowed Gabe to enter the dwelling. He offered the doctor a place to sit and he did, the small hut smelling of rich earth, sun-warmed wood, and sweet grass. There was a pot over the central fire and it was covered though the smell emanated from it was intensely attractive for a man who'd had nothing to eat aside from jerky, stale bread, tea, and gamey desert animals. Ahiga sat with him, pulling at his blanket and adjusting the band that held his hair out of his face.

“Is it unusual to find yourself in the company of...”

“Of white men? For me, no. I am the one of us who has been sent to talk with the men who come from the east. As with the _Diné_ , it becomes not so difficult to see which are the tricksters. No matter what color, men are the same. White men _think_ they are different. If they are, they are only worse.”

Gabe smiled appreciatively. The understanding was always there. Human nature was very much the same in the long run, he supposed.

Ahiga mused thoughtfully. “You are being led to your death.”

“I am a wanted man.”

“You are a gentle Alpha. It surprises me that your people should want to kill you. Is it your medicine?”

Gabe sighed. “It's...it's a strange bit of circumstance. What is more pressing is the matter of the desert...if I am followed, it should not matter where I am led.”

Ahiga nodded solemnly. “It is the tale of Chooli you want.” He took a breath before speaking, visibly piecing together the parts of the story before he began. “She is quite young. She was stubborn as a child and angry as a woman. She spoke against her mother. We feared she had been visited by...spirits. My father did what he could for her but she was taken from us in the night. West of here is a place of tall rocks. There used to be a village there of our clan long before my time. While some of our villages we leave for a time and return to...that one was not left with willing feet. It was marked. By death. One of our own clan—my father remembers him vaguely as his brother—killed his mother and father and disappeared as a wisp of night. He is in the desert. He snakes through the darkness to steal our horses and our livestock. He poisoned Chooli against her family and took her. Clothed her in hides and tried to make her like him.” He stopped, putting a finger to his lips with his hesitation. “We do not speak of such things with outsiders...but you are in danger, Gabriel, if you do not know of it. He is a medicine man. He has the power of the evil spirits behind him.”

“He is a man?”

“If the tale is true, he used to be. Anymore? I cannot say.”

Gabe chewed his bottom lip. “You cannot mean that he's a...? I've heard of...certain things. Whispers mostly.”

“The stories are uncommon. But it is not a topic to discuss. It is easier to tell someone that the land is cursed than to tell them that their brother or sister has become a creature of evil. Some of them are able to live among us...” His eyes shifted to the door as if expecting someone.

“You're suggesting that Chooli has...become one?”

“There are some ways they say a man can tell. My father will see about her. It is...it is the _eyes_ , he says.” Ahiga frowned. “The man...Harper. He asked me a strange question. About the pup.”

“He was born alive,” Gabe replied. “He was healthy enough but when we woke this morning, there was no pup. Only a gila monster...a lizard...atop Chooli's body.”

The Navajo put a hand over his closed eyes and whispered something that could have been an oath or could have been a prayer. Either way, he groaned and mumbled in strained English, “A terrible waste. A terrible, terrible waste. _She is lost to us._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how much moaning I did when my Gram told me she had gotten rid of her Navajo legend book that was written by an actual Navajo writer. I literally could have just rolled around and died. Everything here is from the internet and gleaned from books about the history of Navajo _weaving_. It's not ideal.
> 
> A little bit is revealed to us about this thing. Anyone who's watched the X-Files or is versed at all in Southwestern Tribal lore should know where we're going with this.


	5. Chapter 5

Harper grumbled the whole time he left Stanford with the other horses. He stayed to watch the Paint sidle in with the other horses, nickering and snorting out little warnings that made the other horses nervously sidestep away from him. If the Indian was doing anything to let Pruitt slip away from him, there would most certainly be hell to pay for his actions. Still, he thought the Alpha had more sense than to do something so stupid so he walked back to the hogan with a leisurely pace, taking care to look back over his shoulder to make sure Stanford wasn't starting to get antsy. If the stallion had a bad feeling about the whole ordeal, he didn't seem to be making much of a stink about it so Cole left him there and pulled back the blanket to the hogan, finding Pruitt and the Indian sitting with each other.

He got the feeling there had just been something important floating around in terms of conversation and _of course_ he had missed it entirely, Pruitt actively avoiding engaging eye contact and the scents of the both of them grimly spiced. The doctor's understanding of the culture of these people could turn out poorly for Cole if he let the two of them collude and he made a mental note not to allow it to happen again. Ahiga stood and motioned for Cole to sit near Pruitt. He ignored the gesture and sat on the other side of the doctor, the side facing the door. If that was an issue, the native Alpha did not mention it or react at all and merely portioned out some stew and gave them each a bowl of it.

“Your plans are to return to the big mountains,” Ahiga said, addressing him. “You have business at a settlement there.”

Cole flicked his eyes to Pruitt who didn't react at all. “Yeah, and what of it?”

Ahiga didn't speak to him at first, his scent and expression difficult to read. It wasn't immediately obvious whether or not the strange man was even going to respond at all and the concept of it irked him badly. When he did speak, it was low. “You will not take Chooli. We will keep her.”

“Good,” Cole grumbled.

Ahiga raised one black brow at him so high it almost touched the band around his head. “You have no care for her?”

“Don't you be puttin' words in my mouth. I've never said I don't care for 'er. I'm not her Alpha and I've no obligation to 'er. You're her people.”

“And her babe,” Ahiga murmured. “Your partner—”

“He's _not_ my partner.”

Pruitt's eyes came to him sharply and regarded him with a calm but measured query. Was he going to reveal everything? _Are you going to shame me?_ Cole took in a deep breath and sat back, finishing off his stew and setting the empty bowl aside. “He's going back to Talton for a fair trial.”

The native smiled and gave a light chuckle. “A fair trial? I have seen many fair trials at the hands of the white men.” He cast a commiserating glance to Pruitt. “We have seen many Apache from the limbs of trees further east.”

Pruitt laughed through his nose. “And so you've seen my fate.”

Cole soured, his teeth gritting together.

Pruitt was wry and withering with his words. “I've no illusions as to how I'll be strung up as I'm dragged in. Any trial in Talton for me will be a farce of one.”

Ahiga nodded solemnly. “I will wish you luck, Alpha.” He turned a sideways glance to Cole and quirked up his mouth. “And I think I will wish _you_ luck as well.”

Confused and impatient, Cole stood and barked at the doctor. “Come on. It's near sun-down and we've got to set up camp outside the village. Enough of this.” He waited with his hand on the butt of his gun while Pruitt stood and thanked the Navajo Alpha for his hospitality, offering a vague apology for Cole's behavior before he followed the bounty hunter out into the dry, dusty desert air. The sun was beginning to set, sinking lower as they gathered Stanford and walked to the eastern edge of the village, walking off a distance so that they were close enough to smell the smoke of the fires but far enough not to hear the din of voices.

If the doctor had come up with any plans for him in the middle of the night, Cole would be sure to make him regret ever having dragged the poor Navajo into it. The village was small and comprised of more Betas than Alphas, the sweet clean scent of the occasional Omega here and there. When the wind shifted, Cole was able to scent most of the more high-tempered dynamics, the lot of them invisible only for being Betas and decent yardage away. Chooli, her slightly sickened scent, wafted to him now and again as the breeze rippled over the landscape and whirled through the imperfections in the wooden summer hogans.

Pruitt was quiet, pulling out the hare hides and working them while Cole unpacked his saddlebags and made sure Stanford had enough to eat. Early in the evening, one of the curious Omegas approached their camp and offered Cole some grain for Stanford, his words gibberish but his scent fair and guileless. He accepted the offer and allowed the stallion to nose into the bag while he made up a fire, watching Pruitt intently while the doctor set up a pot with water to boil.

“It's a tea,” Pruitt explained while he dug through his bag for a small sack. He took a pinch of pleasant-smelling herbs and put them in the bottom of a cup and set it aside before he dug through his bag again for a different sack, this one filled with a strange black powder. He didn't offer an explanation of the contents and instead stood up, wandering about their camp with the bag in his hand and sprinkling some as he went in a circle, muttering things to himself as he moved. Cole rolled his eyes at the gesture.

 _Witchcraft_.

“It's no wonder Talton wants to hang you so badly,” he called out. “They've dealt with Indian attacks, potential starvation, mine-collapses, disease...and what do they get for a doctor?”

Pruitt finished his task and set to another one, pulling out a bundle of dried leaves and rolling the tip of it in the fire before he replied, “They get a university-trained Alpha who's made a long journey alone through the territory of several tribes, who's become accustomed to the varying cultures of the region and willing to listen to what someone is saying. If the answer is somewhere outside a physical realm or a scientific one, some doctors will hold their rosaries and pray. Others will look to the earth for guidance. Some to the sun. Some to the moon. And some...” He stared into Cole's eyes, the gray of his irises shining in the orange light of the setting sun. “Some turn to their own personal power.”

Cole felt his heart skip.

“That's you, Harper,” Pruitt clarified with a ghost of a smile on his lips. He continued on his strange quest, fanning his hand over the smoke of the bundle and walking around the circle he'd made with the black powder, still muttering words under his breath so that only he could understand them while Cole sat in front of the fire and watched the licking flames rise up from the logs. When Pruitt was all finished, he took the pouch of tea thoughtfully into his hand and looked up at the hunter. “If you want some of this, you'll have to give me your cup.”

“I'll not have ya druggin' me, Alpha. I don't care if it _is_ just natural ol' tea but to be fair and honest, I'll tell ya now, I won't be takin' a sip of anything you've pulled out of that bag. You're lucky I haven't taken the damned thing away from you by now to make certain ya haven't poisoned me.”

Pruitt smiled and gave a light laugh. “You know, I've already had the opportunity to poison you tonight, had I any poison with which to do it.”

Cole's heart dropped when he thought of the stew only a few hours prior. His hand unconsciously moved to his throat. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let his guard down so badly?

“Don't fall into hysterics over it, I did no such thing. I would have risked the poison in all of our bowls, as I was not the one serving it. Aside, I've already told you, I don't have any.”

Cole snapped back, “Thank you for the offer of the tea, Alpha, but I don't want it.” He stood up, finding himself pacing a bit when he couldn't decide what he wanted to do. On one hand, he wanted to get far away from the odd-smelling smoke of whatever Pruitt had burned and the whole idea that the doctor was mocking him. On the other... He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared off into the desert, a darkening western paradise—or a blistering hell.

“I don't recommend going outside the circle,” Pruitt said from the fire as he poured his tea.

Cole grunted. “I put no stock in dreams and I put no stock in superstition.”

Pruitt ignored him. “When I first came to the west, I heard many stories and was not quick to believe many of them. Tales of trickster owls, coyotes, spiders, and the like. I give such tales the same credence that I should give the Christian God. But there were some...some were told to me with the horror of truth behind them. Even if I could not understand every word said to me, I could understand the feelings behind them. Told as if they, themselves had bore witness.” He paused, sipping his tea. “I think you'll agree with me, Harper, if I say that the west is a vast wasteland of terrors...”

“Opportunity,” he grunted.

Pruitt gave a sharp snort. “Don't tell me you're a man who's fallen for the con of _manifest destiny._ ”

Cole smiled. “You, yourself are an element of the very thing you spit with malice.”

Again he was ignored. “When I was with the Arapaho, they told me one of their legends. That of _Hecesiiteihii._ A race of tiny warrior people who lived in the mountains, who cannibalized the flesh of the tribesmen and savagely took and ate grown men if they wandered too far from the villages and too far from each other.”

“A story to keep children frightened,” Cole replied, “Same as our large wolf in grandmother's bed.”

Pruitt seemed pleased to be able to speak freely and his scent swirled in the drifting wind—a contentedness laid thinly over the veiled fear beneath. That edge was starting to wear in Cole's mind, the fear that was hidden simply becoming a melded part of the Alpha's scent, distracting from the rest of it. The doctor sighed. “At first, I had thought the little people were very much like the wolf of the continent...but I found that I was deeply mistaken. Their history was riddled with tales of these little people and included how they had gotten to be in league with the Sioux... Their treaties with their neighboring tribes were in response to not only their wars with the Crow and others, it was to ward off attacks from tiny cannibals.”

Incredulous, Cole chuckled, walking in a circle around the camp where the doctor had sprinkled the black powder. “And your witchcraft is going to save us from what? These little people? They're in the desert?”

“No...I... I meant to impress upon you that there are some legends which are simply legends. Things like mystical beings and omnipresent forces...but there are some that are true.”

He frowned hard, his incredulousness spreading a smirk across his face. “You cannot tell me that you _saw_ a—”

“ _Hecesiiteihii._ ”

“Alive?”

“Very much so.”

As much as he liked to believe that he was a rational man, a man who did not take stock in dreams or dark bedtime stories, he knew who he was inside. As a boy, he was constantly paying the closest attention to the fireside ghostly tales that were shared at Christmas, and even now, in his saddlebags, the terrifying words of stories and poems sat waiting for him to thumb through the pages again. There was a guise he put up through his short, gruff sentences and his unwillingness to waver into superstition but who was he truly? A man who, in his secret heart, _did_ believe in things supernatural?

 _No. You can't believe that about yourself. Believing in things makes them true._ _The only terrifying thing about the world is human nature and the willingness to do evil that lies in the souls of men._

“If there ever was a trickster,” he growled toward the sitting Alpha, “I'd believe it if they claimed you were he.”

“Have I tricked you, Harper?”

It was a difficult question and one he couldn't rightly answer. If he'd been tricked, the doctor had done a damned thorough job of it. The doubts that plagued him and the questions he'd been asked were not typical and were often studiously avoided. Would they march into Talton for a fair trial and be presented with a sham of one? Could spirits exist? If they do, could they somehow speak to the living? Was there anything to his dreams? Was there anything to witchcraft or the medicine of the Indians? One question burned inside him while he gave a great and blowing sigh through his nose. He wasn't willing to entertain it. He buried it and recognized that he had been burying it for a long time, over and over, and each time he did, it rose again from the loose soil of his heart and gasped for breath to regain its horrible strength.

_Is there a beast inside me?_

He turned to Pruitt, his lip quivering. “What are you afraid of, Alpha? What is out there? If not little people then what?”

There was a long pause, one in which Pruitt was gritting his teeth behind his closed lips. His scent was a mixture, muddling and unsure. He looked down into the fire and put a few pieces of wood into it, to make it glow brighter.

“ _Goddamnit, Pruitt!_ ”

“To say it is to call attention to it,” he hissed, glaring up at Cole with fire in his eyes. “You cannot just casually speak of it or it will know.”

Cole drew up.

“It is as the old Christian legends. _Speak of the devil and he shall appear._ I have heard stories...I have heard _whispers_ of stories and never the whole of one and always in a language beyond our English.”

“And you give them credence.”

“I will, yes. When a man speaks of something freely, he is not scared of it. When he speaks in whispers, it is a matter not to be trifled with. The old medicine man in that village told me that the land to the west was a cursed land. It is not the _land_ that is cursed. There is a _thing_. A...” He shook his head, unwilling to further describe it.

Frustration bloomed and spread through his limbs. “You're mad. And if such a thing is real and true, then a circle of witchcraft and burning herbs won't save you from it. If something is real and could make a footprint then none of this can help you.” Frustration gave way to anger and his voice lowered into a deep and alarming Alpha growl. “A _doctor_. A man of science and medicine who was to come to the west to help his own people, swayed by the superstitions of Indians. A man telling me that there is a being slinking about this desert that means to do harm upon anything that crosses its path. A ghost story! _This_ is what has put fear inside you? _This is what has struck you with terror?!_ ”

He stepped out of the circle, grumbling even as he heard Pruitt's voice calling out with warning. With his sharp eyes on the ground to search for any stray desert prowlers, he wandered off toward the east into the darkness as the last of the sun faded into the horizon and the desert was lit only by the slightest sliver of silver moonlight. The stars flickered overhead, the inky sky spreading out as far as he could see with such an impossible number of lights—pricked pinholes in the blanket of night.

It was in the desert that he found relief. It was easier to let his mind lose the burden of question when the air was clear and the dark was spread all around. Standing alone, he wished he had thought to bring Stanford with him. It had always been he and Stanford together through the whole wide expanse of the west and he had never truly realized how grateful he had been for the silence of his partner. Stanford had never made him doubt his own mind and his own reality.

 _Pruitt is a dangerous man_. _A man of many names._

Flights of fancy were things that happened when one was lost in a book. There was no place for them in life and such distractions were only use enough to get one killed. Truth was in scent. Truth was in sight. Truth was in everything he could sense and feel. There was nothing true of rumor or superstition.

 _“_ _Any trial in Talton for me will be a farce of one.”_

And if it was? He had seen no hard evidence, tangible evidence, that Pruitt had killed anyone. He reflected carefully over everything he had been told and had seen himself. No one had seen the man with blood on his hands. No one had found any evidence at all to suggest that he had done it. He had merely been gone. If he were innocent, why did he run? Cole blinked and shook his head, recognizing the question as a stupid one. Of course he ran. Of course he did. With emotions high and not enough Omegas about the settlement to quell a riot, he would have been dragged through the streets by the noose if they had found him just after the killing. Had Cole found his own lover with her heart ripped from her chest, he should have run too before the rest of the town caught wind of the crime.

Still...with enough time, the settlement would have calmed enough to at least give the Alpha time to collect a defense for himself. Though, Cole thought darkly, he still didn't seem much inclined to profess his innocence.

 _Because he isn't innocent_.

The whole ordeal was starting to seem like one huge mistake. Half of Pruitt's bounty wasn't so bad in the long run if it could save him some of this grief—but to walk back into camp and shoot the man in cold blood after the doctor had been quite complacent in his own capture... He couldn't do it. To shoot the man after he'd given Cole no reason to do so other than his maddening conversation—it was murder. Especially now that he'd come to his own determination that by his own standards, there was no true _proof_ of his guilt.

He swore into the night between gritted teeth, glaring up at the thin silver crescent of moon. “ _This is his trick! Speak of the devil?! Speak of Gabriel Pruitt!_ ”

There was movement to his left and it drew his eye. It flitted away into the shadows of the night but he was certain he'd seen it. It was large. Larger than a coyote.

“Pruitt?” he whispered into the night, his head whipping to the light of their campfire in the distance. He sniffed the air, scenting for the other Alpha. There was nothing. The breeze was coming from the direction of the shadow but he smelled nothing. It had been there. It was not his imagination. “Pruitt!” he whispered hard. “Show yourself or I'll put you in the ground!” His hand fell to the butt of his gun. It was a cold comfort.

His eyes focused hard into the darkness and he could feel the snaking tendrils of fear creeping into his chest. _Why?!_ _Goddamn him!_ The vision of the sneaking Alpha somehow coming upon him through the dark and plunging the fangs of dead rattlesnakes into his throat was flitting through his mind and he turned quickly in the darkness, searching every bit of rustling foliage around him, every shadow cast by the dim light of the moon from small rock formations. He thought about making a break for it and running back toward their camp. He thought about how much safer he might feel in the light.

_I should have tied him up before I left. He's made me into a fool and he's damn well certain of what he's done. Everything's been in his plan. Everything that's happened up until this point has been his clever plot! And I've fallen for it!_

“Pruitt!” he growled into the dark, “I'll kill you, Pruitt!”

Fear gripped him and he was forced to realize that he had never experienced such an emotion. Not even when there was a gun to the back of his head did he have any thought to his death. This was something else. This was an unknown dread that crept into the back of his skull and wrapped its hideous arms around his brain. A rustle behind him whipped him about and he stumbled, a sudden gasp ripping from his throat as he twisted.

He could have screamed but nothing would come from his throat. Eyes. Horrible yellow, unholy _eyes_ burned from a solid black shadow, ragged at the edges and nowhere near human. He saw it for mere moments before it moved to hold up one gnarled, fisted set of talons, its breath rank with rot while it blew and roared toward him, the dust in its grip thrown straight into his eyes and nose.

Finally, he screamed, more from pain than terror. He fell as the thing vanished as if into the very air, his knees hitting the hard regolith of the desert and his hands coming to his eyes. It burned like fury and stuck in his nose like pitch. Blinded, he felt his breaths grow longer, harder, and as the coyote howled, his soul howled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this while walking to work. God tier. 
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr for Omegaverse shit. [J.D. Writes](https://www.jdwrites.tumblr.com).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Aftermath of rape.

There had been pain. Plenty of it. He was bleeding still and he knew it but the agony had been so intense that he didn't dare move until he was certain the ordeal was over. The only question was whether or not what happened was going to be _continuing_ to happen after the sun came up. There were a few aspects of how the night had ended that were understandable and more than enough for him to come to know whatever was in the desert's true intentions.

They were in horrific danger. Whether it was Harper or Gabe that the creature was angered by, it didn't matter. The damage would be shared by both of them, equally. If it had been territory, they were out of it by now and the thing, _yee_ _naal_ _dlooshii_ , had followed them. For what purpose? To torture? To harass? To kill? Certainly Gabe could have been killed. Certainly he still could be if things had not changed with the heavy weight of sleep. Had it been Chooli?

_Of course it was_ _Chool_ _i_ _._

The girl had been wandering the desert dressed in hides. The Navajo never dressed in hides save for very specific reasons and to be so pregnant to have been stolen from her people... Yee naaldlooshii did this and for what reason? What circumstances could have driven it to kidnap a willful young woman and fill her with a child? Though, Ahiga had known of her situation, which meant that the village was perhaps more aware of the legend than the Alpha had shared with him.

Diffused light began to show in reds from the horizon and his tired eyes dragged over the landscape from where he lay on his bedroll. At least he was on the bedroll. At least that was where he had managed to crawl. At least it had already been stained and ruined with blood before this. He couldn't move. There was a deep ache inside him but when it came right down to it, they were all built to manage the stress of it. He'd managed to hold in his screams and his throat was raw from his growled, rasping grunts. Had anyone from the village heard them, it would have gone poorly for both them and the bounty hunter.

Harper stirred behind him and he tensed, having to remind himself to relax while he regulated his breathing. If the Alpha was still out of his mind, Gabe was going to have to sink his teeth into the back of his hand to distract himself. He'd managed to avoid it until this point but how far he could go without a distraction was no longer a mystery. A renewal of this pain was not on the top of his list of to-dos.

The only other sure thing was that for their survival, he would have to convince Harper to work together with him. Though it was possible he could do it alone had he Harper's gun and perhaps even Stanford on his side, two sets of eyes were much better than one and he was unwilling to kill anyone. _Do no harm_. He felt a pang of shame in his heart and stared at a tarantula that was slowly walking across the stones about five feet from their camp. It was undaunted by the black salt he'd strewn about in a circle and wandered smoothly across the landscape with its graceful but hairy little legs. Of course, it all depended upon whether or not Harper was struck again. This time hadn't been the worst it could be—oh no. Gabe was under the impression that this was most certainly not the worst event that was possible through the wit of yee naaldlooshii.

He gasped when Cole moved and snapped his hand to the Alpha's hip, gripping his gun belt hard to stop him from jostling around.

“ _Whuh...?_ ”

“Please don't move, Harper. I'll beg you if I have to.”

There was a long pause. The Alpha was still waking up. If he could see, it was likely blurry, but he could most definitely feel and there was going to be absolutely no mistake of what he'd done when he came-to fully.

“What...whuh-what did yuh-you...do...to me?”

“I've done nothing to you, Alpha. Whatever you saw in the desert, whatever attacked you, I can guarantee to you, it was not me.”

Harper paused again, breathing hard, his breath feathering over the cowlick by Gabe's ear. “I...I'm...what am I... _what am I doing?_ ” He made as if to move again but Gabe stopped him, a hint of his _Alpha_ strength coming to the fore.

“ _Please_ , Harper... Please.” He swallowed. “It hurts, Alpha. I can't...I won't be able to handle it if you move. Just...just wait. Wait it out.”

Harper made a distressed sound and honestly, it was entirely understandable. After all, he'd woken up after he'd obviously forgotten his entire ordeal and here he was in the middle of the desert with his knot buried inside a bruised and bleeding _Alpha_. Not just any Alpha, of course, but the one he was supposed to be bringing back to some kind of justice to collect a bounty on. His reaction was actually on the more stable side, if Gabe was to be completely truthful with himself and he wasn't sure whether or not he could express that sentiment aloud without receiving an immediate retort.

“How are your eyes, Harper?” Gabe asked, keeping his voice low and passive. “You were rubbing at them pretty harshly.”

“It...it feels like...they're sandy...” His voice was half a whisper and his scent was brimming with shame. “My...my nose...my nose burns. And there's...there's blood in my mouth.”

“Your gums are bleeding.” Gabe sighed heavily. “You're lucky you're young and in good shape. In a man with less stamina or a weaker heart, that poison is fatal. I've never seen it used but I know how it's made. Your eyes and nose will be alright in a day or so and your gums in a few hours.”

“Whuh-what _is it?_ ”

“It's a powder derived from...” He sighed. “It's derived from an Omega or, ideally, _several_ Omegas while they're in heat. It's essentially a concentration strong enough to send you into a feral rut. Obviously, you didn't know what you were doing. I...I don't blame you. I don't think you're responsible for this.”

“Oh God,” he breathed. “How long have I been...stuck...?”

Gabe grimaced. “It's been about three hours.”

“ _Three hours!?_ ”

“Trust me,” Gabe almost chuckled, “You don't want to hear the details. Take it for what it is and wait for it to go away. It _will_ go away. It has...before...”

His scent was shifting between shame and frustration and a fair amount of anger. “How many times did I...no. _No_. I...I wake up and my head is pounding...my gums are _bleeding_ and I've got an _Alpha_ on my _cock._ And you don't think I want to _hear how it happened?!_ ” He made a short but expressive sound of misery. “What have I _done?!_ ”

Saying it would make it real. If he didn't know, he couldn't overreact. Gabe gritted his teeth and was silent until Harper moved, shifting a tiny bit backwards and even that simple movement was enough for Gabe to cry out, for his hand to lock down upon Cole's gun belt again and for him to jerk the other Alpha back to where he was. “ _Alright_ ,” he cried, “You were mad with lust. You couldn't help yourself. You were stumbling through the desert and you were screaming and wailing. You crawled back towards camp and when I caught you, you...” _You tore at me. You held me down. You raped me. Many times._ “You were...forceful.”

“You're hurt.”

“I'll live.”

Harper was still breathing hard out his nose, obviously trying to keep his panic in check. His life had, in a single moment, careened completely and utterly out of his control. The shock of having such a thing happen to an Alpha in his prime was a bitter pill to swallow and though Harper seemed to be handling it well, his grip was slipping. He hadn't thought out this kind of scenario. The path ahead wasn't clear. Gabe recognized it. It was in his burning scent, his breathing, and every tremble that coursed through him. He was behind the doctor still taking stock of where he was and what had happened to him. The squeeze of warmth around his cock and his knot, the stickiness of his seed between them, the smell of pain and blood. Gabe knew where it would all spiral.

“Calm yourself, Alpha,” he stated mildly. “If anyone should be upset about this, it's me. Do I sound upset?” He paused when Harper didn't reply. “Alpha? Do I sound upset?”

“N-no...”

“It's because I'm not. You've had a small mishap.”

“I hurt you.”

Gabe chuckled. “You're going to march me into Talton to have me hanged. You were ready to shoot me when we met. Should you be concerned about hurting me now?”

He heard Cole swallow and then give a long and tired sigh, falling into a thoughtful silence for the next thirty minutes or so. As the sun finally rose fully above the horizon, his knot subsided and Gabe carefully coached him through a slow disengagement. He hissed through his teeth at the pain of it all and pinched his features together when he felt blood and semen dribble out of him. He'd had worse. He'd been shot by an arrow before, pierced through the outer flesh of his thigh. That and the subsequent cauterizing of the wounds had been much worse than this. Of course, he thought, he had only been shot by _one_ arrow and it had only happened _once._

“Oh God,” Harper whispered. “There's blood everywhere...”

Gabe could feel a stressful sweat starting to drip from his hairline. “My water skin. Wash yourself off then bring me my bag. I have to tend to this...”

The dour regret in the hunter's scent strengthened. “Let me help you...”

“No, it's better if I—”

“Pruitt,” he interjected, his voice trembling, “I did this.”

 _No you didn't._ There was no argument with a grieving Alpha. His melancholy could only increase if he was given no recourse for atonement. It was a lesson that Gabe knew only so well even if he wished that Harper would simply leave him be. Refusing to meet the hunter's eyes, he mumbled his response. “Very well.”

Harper did well despite his shaking hands. He followed every miniscule direction he was given and by the time Gabe was able to again pull up his trousers, the pain was lessened and he was quite clean. He supposed that he had no right to hold onto any embarrassment though having an alpha tend to him under the full light of day was very much unnerving. It was foreign to have such large hands in such tender places and bestowing upon him such fluttering touches. Had he not been in so much pain, he could have been more concerned of a very different sort of humiliation. The idea made him burn with disgrace.

_Could it even happen? Could I possibly become aroused by mere touches? Is it the heat? Is it that I haven't had an Omega in so long? How could my body even entertain the thought?_

His mouth stretched flat into a line. Harper had already been inside him. It had been excruciating. The mystery was gone. The boundary was broken. And this is what he was occupying his mind with? Sure, when he had been a boy, it had been a passing fantasy when he lay in his bed and stared up at the ceiling and carelessly stroked himself to completion. Before he had presented, it had been just that—passing. And when he had...in the throes of a first rut, an Alpha boy was prone to many types of fantasies. Anything to get the knot to diminish. Anything to come to orgasm. Anything to find release. Surely the fantasy of an Alpha, the fantasy of strong arms and forceful kisses was not so unusual...but _now?_ After all this time? After what had just happened to him?

_You're a fool, Gabriel. Rape like this is sexless. He was out of his mind. No Alpha would ever admit to such fictions of mind._

He ground his teeth and closed his eyes, pulling up a bit of his bedroll underneath his head while Harper cleaned up around him.

The hunter's deep, graveled voice was softer than usual. “I'm going to take Stanford to the river. I'll come back with something to eat.”

He murmured his agreement and regulated his breathing to control the remnants of his pain. He had some willow bark in his bag but with his bleeding, he didn't wish to risk exacerbating it. Willow bark thinned the blood. He would have to simply overcome. His thoughts were halted by a strange sound which made his body tense and his head crane upward.

“Stanford!” Harper snapped at the stallion who'd reared and backed away from the hunter's advance. He was holding out his hands to either side of him but the horse pawed the ground at his feet and spun around boldly, peevishly prancing about while shaking his head, stomping and carrying on with harsh blowing sounds. When Harper took another step forward, the horse screamed and bowed up with his ears pinned back, stiff to his neck. “For the love of Christ, _what_ has gotten you into such a goddamn foul moo—” His voice dropped off and his hands came down to his sides again while he straightened and allowed the stallion his tantrum.

Gabe frowned. “H-Harper?”

The Alpha stomped back to the camp, uncertain with his scent rife in frustration. “He saw me. He saw what I did to you. What I became. He can smell it on me. I'm...I'm not who I was...” Blue eyes, once cold and solid as hardened steel met Gabe with a liquescent doubt.

The doctor wished he could have remained perfectly serious but his efforts were entirely in vain. He chuckled and then lightly laughed where he lay, shifting slowly to find comfort on his back. “Oh and everyone always says that Omegas are the ones prone to melodrama. Here you are, a pitiful creature. Take yourself to the river and wash off your face. You stink of blood and sex and some hideous amalgamation of heat. If that isn't enough to make your horse wary of you, you're right then. Your violent rut should be enough to make him wonder about your current disposition. When you smell better, come back and apologize to the poor thing for spooking him.”

Harper, sufficiently chastised, retreated into the morning and when he was finally gone, Gabe leaned over to his bag and pulled out the the slippery elm ointment he'd been saving for the part of his treatment he could _not_ allow Cole to administer. Dipping his fingers into it, he reached behind himself and gritted his teeth before he slipped a finger inside and spread it liberally. It would both heal and ease the pain and it was not something he was willing to let the other Alpha administer.

_That's just what you need. The bastard putting anything else into your ass._

He willed his hands to quit their pathetic shaking when he carefully dipped his finger into the ointment again and applied it. Any tears he had managed to sustain would heal and he would be just about good as new in a few days. How he was ever going to manage to walk like this was a mystery and riding would be just as agonizing. He lay prostrate and closed his eyes. Cole had set up his small tent structure and he let the warmth of the day wash over him while he lay in the shade. He fell asleep readily, having had no rest the previous night.

He awoke several hours later to find that Cole had collected and prepared food and was sitting with his back against a rock with a small, tattered book in his hand. He was peaceful where he sat, his strong Alpha scent wafting calmly through the desert breeze. It had shed the sour and spicy disfigurement of anguish and frustration and mellowed into that smokey, fire scent of a burning cedar and pine forest. Gabe took deep breaths of it, hoping for something. Perhaps to determine if it was more like balsam fir or more like a blue spruce. Mayhap, he was looking to be overcome by it, the way Alphas were commonly overcome by the memories that sprang from an Omega's scent. Could such a thing be possible from the aroma of a fellow Alpha? Could he ever scent anything other than a raging wildfire at Harper's throat?

_What is wrong with me?_

Surely it was only that the remnants of the poison on Harper's clothes or face had managed to make their way into his senses. Surely it was just that he hadn't had an Omega or even a Beta in such a long time. Surely it was that Elvira had withheld her gentle grace with him and given it freely to Ned Powell. Such a thing stung an Alpha.

_Enough to kill them? Enough to tear out her heart?_

He shook his head, willing the errant thought to be banished from his mind. The movement alerted Harper to his awakened state and they met gazes for a moment before Harper quickly turned his blue eyes away, seeking to avoid that tenuous connection and find wherever he had left off on his page.

Gabe didn't let him go that easily. “I hadn't thought you be a man to read much, Harper.”

His low voice put a miniscule pressure deep in Gabe's belly and he sought to strangle it before it could grow. “I'd venture you'd find a few things about me surprising.”

“I suppose I might. How long have I slept?”

“A fair while. I took Stanford to the river...he didn't want to go. Didn't want to let you out of his sight.” Harper's mouth ghosted into a kitten smile before it was gone quick enough to cast doubt of its presence in the first. “You've got some kind of witchery about horses?”

Gabe huffed a fine chuckle through his nose. “No...none of that. I'd like to thank him, though. He's a kind spirit even if he is a bit rough about his edges.”

“He'll kill me one day.”

This time his laugh was full and escaped his mouth. “You've so much conviction when you say it. A jaded and cynical man, you are, Harper. Tell me. What do you read?”

“It's...” His hesitation was enough to make Gabe even more curious. “It's a...a bit of poetry. Some prose...”

“Prose and poetry? For a man like you, Harper? I should have expected something robust. Who is the poet?”

To this question, Harper flushed, his cheeks becoming noticeably reddened and ruddy while he shut the book and tucked it into a sack as if he could hide it. “Some Beta or another,” he said huskily, grumbling as he got to his knees and rekindled the dwindling fire. “I've made us some stew. The Indians have been kind and they've accepted some trades...I suppose I have you to thank for that,” he said, consciously avoiding the subject of his reading material.

Gabe let him have his avoidance. How could he admit to a poetic soul as an Alpha of the West? His life was difficult, his heart was hardened, but his mind was at least malleable. A man who sought knowledge, who sought to expand everything he'd known through the word of someone else, it was commendable indeed. An Alpha who took the words of “some Beta” and carried them about with him in his saddlebags and leafed through them so much as to tatter the pages—Harper was right. There was much about him that Gabe thought might have proved to be quite unexpected.

Gabe adjusted himself to tilt his head backward where he lay, knowing full well he was drawing attention to himself through the submissive gesture. He stared up at the material of Harper's tent over him while he exposed the flesh of his throat, bruised as it was from Harper's aggression the night before. He had been brutally scented, though how much of _him_ the hunter could have smelled through the blast of Omega heat powder in his nose wasn't clear. Perhaps none. The Alpha's keen and almost disturbing sense of smell would be returning gradually and by the wide-eyed stare he gained from bearing his neck, he was becoming convinced that it had already.

Eventually, he would have to get up and wash his bedroll...again. It probably wasn't worth trying to procure another one. By the time he could get it all worn in, he'd be swinging a few feet from the ground. He closed his eyes against the thought but it came to him anyway, the image of men he'd seen hang. In some places, the gallows were made such so that the condemned could fall a number of feet, their necks snapping and death coming almost instantaneously. But that was in the east. This was the west. This was where they placed you on a wooden platform, forced you to step upon a stool, and kicked it out from under you. It was where you gave one last little strangled cry before you swung helplessly. If your legs weren't tied, you kicked once or twice, a last ditch effort to find purchase as the rope closed every channel for blood and air.

Death was slow to come and the process painful. The whole of it took ten to twenty minutes at the very least and had a strange effect on the body. In some cases, men twitched as they died, their muscles receiving signals even as their tongues lolled from their mouths and their eyes rolled back into a purplish, swollen face. In some cases, more than he cared to admit, men who had reached death in such a manner had often sported rather unimpressive erections which lasted hours after their deaths.

_Angel lust._

If there had been a God to pray to, Gabe thought he might have asked simply to die without the indignity of having an erection while the whole town of Talton watched. He covered his face with his hands and groaned at the idea of it, having forgotten that Harper was only feet away from him.

“I'm sorry,” the Alpha blurted out to him, his voice furtive, “I...I'm sorry I...I did what I did to you.”

He dropped his hands down to his chest and peered over at the man. Harper was watching a set of clouds move over the sun, frowning at their darkened color. “It wasn't you, Alpha.”

“It was. That's the worst of it all. When you told me that we're Alphas...that we're all beasts inside...I told you that I wasn't.” He lifted one brow at himself, scoffing though he wasn't smiling. “Come to find myself having done something I couldn't explain. Having to see with my own eyes the havoc that an Alpha can wrought if unleashed. You'd have had every right to disarm me and put me down with my own gun if you could have. You'd have every right to do it now, in fact.”

“You're no threat to me now, Harper.”

“Am I not? Could I not fall into the same trap? Could I not find myself atop you tomorrow morn as well?”

“Tonight, mayhap you'll stay inside the circle.”

His lips shut tight and he glared upwards toward those rain-swelled clouds, watching them blot out the rest of the harsh sunlight, diffusing everything around them into muted tones of beige and tan and dusty orange.

“Aside,” Gabe mused, eager to know what Cole would do when the rains came, “Are you not a threat to me now? You're to lead me to my death.”

“To your _trial_ ,” Harper corrected him and Gabe felt no reason to argue the point. If the man wished to continue with his delusion, that was of no consequence to Gabe. That was, until the rope was slung about his neck. The hunter got up and readjusted the makeshift tent that was over Gabe to widen it a bit by unfolding pieces and repositioning the poles, leaving just enough space under it for the both of them to sit with some of their packs.

Gathering his strength, the doctor moved to sit up, reaching into his bag to find available vessels that were free to collect rainwater which he set up while Harper gathered all his necessary items and tucked them under the oilcloth tent. When they were just about ready for the rains, a great flash of lightening streaked across the darkened gray skies, paths and trails branching off in a hot and blinding web through the underside of the clouds. The air was heavy with electricity and the coming storm and as Harper moved beside him, close enough that their elbows touched, Gabe took in a long, deep breath of his burning scent and wondered how in the world he was ever going to survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant for this to be out this morning. Took a hike instead. Terrible person.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who commented last chapter. Comments make me grossly happy, to be honest.
> 
> Also: If you don't wanna comment or you can't comment on here for lack of an account, talk to me! I have an **Omegaverse Tumblr at[J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com)** where you can ask me headcanons, suggest drabbles you'd like to see, and just chat with me about fiction, Omegaverse, whatever else. My DMs are always open too so if you have questions about anything unrelated, just go ahead and come chat. I'm 100% accessible as long as you're polite.


	7. Chapter 7

It had taken him the whole of the morning to calm himself down and still, he was certain he would never truly recover from it. The sticking, potent question had been answered and the answer was difficult to understand, difficult to process, and difficult to swallow. He was a monster. He was as much a monster as any other Alpha who had lived and had sinned and had committed a crime. All his life, he had kept his heart from rotting, knowing full well what stagnant pools of anger or lust or greed could do to rust and weaken a man's soul. He had done something unforgivable and he could not rationalize it way that Pruitt had.

_It wasn't you_.

It _was_ him. It was his body. Who else could it have been? If Pruitt was going to insist that he didn't mean it, that the lust he had felt wasn't his, then he was deceived. The Alpha inside him had howled along with the coyotes. It had been his own body's reaction to the collected powerful scents of Omegas in heat and it was something he could not fight. He was an _Alpha_ , after all.

_There is a beast inside me._

He wished—oh God, he wished—that it could be somehow shocking that he had taken out his lust and his frustrations upon another of his own dynamic. Most likely, he could have brutalized anyone or anything that had been warm and living. That it was Pruitt made it all the worse that the man hadn't killed him. At least if he had run into the village and taken to a helpless Omega, he would have been shot or clubbed to death. He would not have had to wake up with his cock and his knot buried to the hilt inside of _Gabriel Pruitt._

He sighed while the first drops of rain began to patter down over the red sandstone rocks that littered the desert. He had divested Stanford of his saddle and he watched the stallion flick his tail at the air, nosing around at the smell of the dust when it was kicked up by the rainfall. He was not tethered and took a few steps here or there, sniffing this way and that way, flicking his ears every so often toward Cole and Pruitt as if to just make sure they were still where he left them. The rain was warm and if there was anything Stanford loved, it was warm rain. Had Cole been in a colder climate, he would have made certain to find a small place to create a lean-to for him to stand under but such an effort would have been wasted here. The horse loved the water and tossed his head about, eager to get as much of it on him as possible.

“He seems to be enjoying himself,” Pruitt murmured, watching Stanford play while he adjusted himself so that he was leaning backwards with his weight closer to his hip. Cole tried not to pay too close attention to the way the man was sitting. It only served to remind him of his viciousness.

“Yes,” he muttered back. “He likes rain.” He cursed himself for his stupid short sentences and he again lamented that he hadn't shot the man as soon as he'd seen him, Omega be damned. He gave a trembling sigh and put a fist to his forehead.

“Are you still obsessing about it, Alpha? It'll do you no good. It's a shock to find yourself at the mercy of anything but you've got to keep your wits or you truly _will_ end up in the same predicament. It's no use to feel sorry for yourself.”

“Why don't you piss off, you festering demon?” Cole growled, heat and anger rising and boiling under his prickling skin.

Pruitt jerked with offense.

“I meant what I said when I told you that I should believe you to be the devil himself.”

“I'm only trying to help.”

“Then quit trying to convince me that it's _nothing_ to have done what I've done! For all rights, you should have killed me. You should have wrested my gun from my side and shot me through the head. But you _didn't._ ”

“I won't kill you, Alpha.”

He felt his lower eyelid trembling so he closed both of his eyes and put his hands in his hair, sifting through it and pulling a bit in his confusion. “I don't understand! By your own words, I'm taking you to Talton to have you killed and you've made no attempt at escape! Are you guilty, Alpha?! Do you have a crisis of conscience?!”

There was a small pause until Pruitt mumbled softly, “Perhaps I do.”

“Then kill yourself if you so believe to deserve it! Leave my sanity out of it!” He felt himself shaking and he hated it. He hated more than he had hated anything else on God's green earth and he stood up suddenly, scrambling out of the small tent to stand in the rain, leaving his hat where it lay so the fat warm drops could saturate his hair. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rolled over the dampened dust and echoed off the walls of the red, barren mesas.

“Harper!”

He stood still, staring out at the desert with a kind of nameless dread seeping into his chest. The same dread he knew was present in Pruitt's own scent, laying beneath his identity, waiting to consume him. The kind of fear that made men _rot_.

_If I fear it, it wins. If I know it, I cannot fear it._

He turned around, finding gray eyes peering up at him from under the tent's edge, the clear droplets of rain that fell from the oilcloth down onto Pruitt's cheeks mocking tears. He grated his words out through his teeth. “ _What is it, Pruitt?_ What is this thing called?”

Pruitt's mouth clamped tight and Cole could see the small muscles in his jaw twitch while he fought not to say it.

“Tell me, Alpha, or God is my witness, I'll put a bullet through your heart and drag your body back to Talton naked as the day your Oma squeezed you out into this world.”

“ _Yee naaldlooshii._ ”

He felt stupid. What had he expected? Something he recognized? Something he knew anything about? He stared downward at the other Alpha while the rain soaked him and filled the washes and the basins. The steady plinking sound that came from Pruitt's glass jars and vials served to calm him but only slightly. At least, he thought, the wet would make him a bit cooler and would subdue his temper.

“It hears its name sure as if I've shouted it from the top of a mesa,” Pruitt said.

He glanced about into the desert again, watching the hazing and shifting wall of rain eddy over the landscape, obscuring the distant view of the desert's vastness. He spoke again though this time he let his fantasy give him a deep and profound shudder which ran the length of his spine and rippled through him as if he were to become a pool upon the ground.

_Then--in my childhood--in the dawn_

_Of a most stormy life--was drawn_

_From_ ev'ry _depth of good and ill_

_The mystery which binds me still--_

_From the torrent, or the fountain--_

_From the red cliff of the mountain--_

_From the sun that 'round me roll'd_

_In its autumn tint of gold--_

_From the lightning in the sky_

_As it_ pass _'d me flying by--_

_From the thunder, and the storm--_

_And the clouds that took the form_

_(When the rest of Heaven was blue)_

_Of a demon in my view--_

It was as Pruitt claimed and he swore, he _swore_ , to his dying day he would profess it, that he saw a misty shadow, a darkness formed by wind and rain, slither through the downpour just out of the reach of his sharp eyes. It was no fancy, no flights or fear. It was his own eyes the same as it was his own eyes in the night that beheld the cryptic form of that horrible silhouette. That which reached before its own obscured face with not hands but grotesque _talons_ like that of an eagle or hawk or _vulture._ If he'd been a praying man, he might have uttered a whisper of one. Had he been a Catholic, he should have crossed himself. He looked down at Pruitt suddenly.

“Can you protect us?”

“I can try same as you can. If you'll humor me with my witchcraft, I'll humor you with your pistol.”

He bent back down and sat himself down again underneath the shelter while Stanford stood still, his head up, his ears perked, and his stance alert. It was no scent nor odor. It was a _feeling_. It was in the way the stallion connected with the earth that sent him into cautiousness. Any normal horse would give their nervous tells but Stanford was, as Cole often thought, as much a wily demon as anything else that stalked the desert. His cold icy eyes glared into the rain while he stood stock still and waited as a predator waits for its prey.

Pruitt remarked softly, “You've a strange friend.”

“I know.”

“Loyal.”

“Spiteful,” Cole corrected. “Spiteful and mean. And I couldn't be any more grateful for it.” He turned to the covered pot which he had moved under the tent and he dipped their portions of stew into bowls, handing the doctor one of them and taking the other. No sooner did he start eating than Pruitt mused again.

“'Some Beta,' you said. The poet. A quite famous one, I should say. And you give no credence to dreams despite your well-worn books on just that matter?”

He spoke with his mouth full. “Don't think too much of it.”

Pruitt huffed a laugh. “How could I not? It's not everyday you meet a man who can bring the words of Poe from his lips without conscious focus. Is that the only book you bring with you? It must be a beloved one and carried by a man who has no interest in...” He paused. “Carried by an Alpha...who is more Alpha than any man in the West.”

He leveled an unamused stare upon Pruitt and gave a short, scenting sniff in his direction, sensing something...off. His eyes flicked about as the rains eased around them. _Respect. Admiration. Something else. Something_ _unpl_ _aceable_ _._ “You've misplaced your esteem. It seems that the only part of me I'll consider cursing is the Alpha.”

“And without it, you could not capture so many men. You could not have captured me.”

“I would have chosen a less dangerous profession. Had I done so, I should not have found myself pursued by a demon and dragging the devil back to hell.”

“You surely do not mean it when you say it.”

“How do I know that you're not in league with this thing? That it doesn't know you somehow?”

A hard stormy glare drew his gaze and he turned his eyes away to avoid it, knowing just what it implied. That Pruitt would never have made the mistake of leaving Cole alive to savagely defile him. He never would have allowed himself to be held down and...

“I'm sorry,” Cole muttered. “That was wrong of me to say.”

A break in the clouds let through a beam of sunshine that danced through the rain in a brilliant swath of color through the gray above them and Pruitt didn't answer him, looking up at the rainbow with sadness in his scent. It was a human thing to see things as they had not been seen before when faced with an imminent end and Cole had observed it time and time again. Some men blubbered and carried on their innocence, hoping until the last that they might see _another_ of something. Another golden field swaying the breeze. Another Omega soft and inviting in their bed. Another rainbow. Pruitt looked upon it and appreciated it as the _last_ of something. It had never been enough to tug against Cole's heart before but there was something about those sad gray eyes.

_A crisis of conscience._

“Did you do it, Alpha?” he grunted while he set down his empty bowl.

Pruitt shrugged one shoulder. “It doesn't matter if I have.”

“It matters in the eyes of the law.”

The side of his mouth pinched and drew down. “What is the law? This is a godless country, Harper. There is nothing here to suggest that there is any true law that could be worthy of the name. In my life, such as it is, I have done many things that to some could be worthy of death and to others were mere inconveniences. I have held malevolence in my heart and in the Christian faith, malevolence of any kind is worthy of damnation whether it show itself or remain hidden. Is our law Christian? Is our law human? Am I to be executed for my deeds or my morality? My actions or my beliefs?”

“You're over-thinking it,” Cole replied simply.

Pruitt sighed and laid down on his back, putting his hands on his belly, his fingers interlaced. He tilted back his head and dropped it to the shoulder on the far side of him, exposing a great part of his throat in what had to be intentional submission. It was confusing and strange so Cole refused to look at it after his first furtive glance. That an Alpha should make such a gesture was something utterly unfamiliar to his experiences and he almost wanted to chastise the man for it. But how could he? It was bizarre and striking and it put a nervous tickle in his guts. He was horrified at his fleeting thoughts, wanting at once to lean over and trail his nose against that undoubtedly tender flesh and also bark at him to sit up, to quit his martyrdom. Why should he entertain the fancy of scenting an Alpha? How much had he done the previous night that he did not remember that his body and his subconscious would seek to recall? The bruises on Pruitt's throat made it all too clear what he had done. Nipping, sucking, and mouthing him like some kind of ruthless, deviant fiend. Thank God he did not remember it. To imagine himself struggling against another Alpha's body, ripping at his clothes and desperately rutting as some feral monster was enough without having the memory to brutalize him further.

Some Alphas were violent men. Their insistence upon blaming their outbursts upon a feral state had been reason to scoff for most of his life. He'd witnessed more acts of savagery from cold, dead-eyed Alphas than those in a mindless panic. Now, he glanced at the doctor's damaged throat and wondered at the thought that slipped, insidious, into his brain.

_Does he even remember?_

Was it possible that Pruitt, the man of many names, had experienced a true feral state? Was it possible that the man Cole had deemed the devil was actually a gentle Alpha? His scent, less burning and intrusive than most, his demeanor, and his reluctance to harm anyone, even those who were an immediate danger...all of it added up to an inconvenient conclusion. That the law, neither of man nor God, had any true concessions for one who had no memory of his crime. That Gabriel Pruitt was not, and had never been, a dangerous man.

“Why didn't you kill me?” Cole asked in a low mumble. “Did you even try to?”

“Admittedly, I did not. I thought you would eventually come back to yourself. I could not take your life for something you would not remember having done...” Pruitt turned his head back toward Cole and stared up at him. “You're a good man, Harper. Even if I could have fought and won against you, it would have been a waste to have killed you.”

He shook his head and changed the subject. “How many babes do you think you've brought into the world, Pruitt?”

“Nine or so. Alive, that is. Eleven, total. Two still-births. I was assisting a midwife once with a child who only lasted around two days. Some are born with curious afflictions...”

“Poor devils.”

“It is perhaps one of the more prominent reasons that it is so easy to abandon God,” the doctor explained while he sat up. The rains were petering off and the sun began shining over the dampened sands. He moved out from under the oilcloth and poured the inches of water into a larger glass jar before he rummaged in his bag for some of his herbs, wrapping a bundle of them into a bit of cheesecloth before he stuffed it into the rainwater and twisted the lid on, setting it up on top of a rock to heat in the sun. “That any omnipresent and omnipotent and all-powerful force could possibly allow children to be born doomed and in pain is beyond comprehension.” He glanced at Cole. “It's a sun tea. You'll want to drink it if you're to humor me.”

“I'll humor you.”

He nodded, reverting back to his point. “When one thinks of it logically, God doesn't make any reasonable sense.”

“How's that?”

“Simple. If he is all-powerful, then he must be malevolent or at the very least, ambivalent. If he is not malevolent or ambivalent but is, in fact, the benevolent God that many wish were truth, he cannot be all-powerful, therefore, _not a god_. Both scenarios suggest that worship of such an entity is futile at best. The third option is even more decided.”

“Which is?”

Pruitt looked at him thoughtfully. “That there is no such thing.”

“And yet you practice witchcraft.”

He appeared amused. “And yet, witchcraft,” he agreed. “If you are to witness an impossibility with your own eyes, it cannot be over-stated that there are inexplicable forces at work around us. I say inexplicable but what I mean is 'unexplored.' Nothing is inexplicable. If there is such a thing as a Christian God, then there will eventually be evidence as to his existence.”

“Witness testimony isn't enough for you?” Cole asked.

“The Bible is hardly witness testimony. I will give it the same treatment you give to the tale of little cannibals. Stories to tell around the hearth. Tales I will liken to Homer's _Odyssey_.”

Cole smiled. “If you have no religion, how do you have a morality? What is to stop a man from doing what he will without fear of divine retribution?”

Pruitt frowned at him as if the answer to the question was supposed to be a given. He raised one inky brow back at him and the doctor explained. “Nothing. There should be nothing to threaten us into being kind. If the argument is that man would devolve into a primeval horde of blatant rape and murder then I should say that if a society cannot exist without a religion then it _should not exist at all._ ” He shrugged while he wiped out his vials and rinsed out his bowl. “There are some things that are wrong in themselves. Murder. Theft. There are some that are wrong by way of sin. Fornication. The love between certain dynamics. Barring some overlap in the two, most sins don't hurt anyone at all and their function mostly is to make those who don't commit them feel righteously affronted by their commission by another independent party. Some people get off on feeling righteous. It's a vice in and of itself.”

Cole paused and let the whole of his words sink in. “Well,” he said. “This is about the first thing you've said to me that makes a whole lot of sense.”

Pruitt smiled and it was genuine. His gray eyes shined when he looked over his shoulder and found Cole looking at him. “I'm glad.”

“What do you do now, Alpha?”

The doctor looked back down to the mixture he was creating and explained, “It's just a few protective things. Mostly salt, actually. Some other things. It should make it more difficult for anything to come into our camp that means us harm.”

“And you believe that.”

“Hopefully _it_ will believe that. I could be wasting my time. It can't hurt to do it, anyway. You've got your way of protection and I've got mine. We need to work together to be effective in either case.” He stood up and made a circle around their camp again. When he was finished, he wandered back and was distracted by Stanford who approached him with a nod and a nicker. “Yes, friend?” he asked kindly.

Stanford took a step forward and nosed him gently on his shoulder, nuzzling his neck with clear and obvious affection.

Cole stared, standing up and watching the interaction with puzzled awe stirring inside him. “Hell and damnation...” he mumbled.

“I believe,” Pruitt said to the horse, “you've thrown Harper. You're feeling better this afternoon, I take it? Do not hold it against him. He's got enough guilt to drown himself in it. He doesn't need it from you as well.”

The stallion made a grunt as if he understood what Pruitt had said and Cole's mouth opened slightly while he stood speechless. Stanford had never _ever_ been affectionate with another Alpha. Omegas, certainly. Betas, rarely. Alphas—never! As Stanford's head shifted to accommodate a gentle scratching behind his ear, his cold ice eye met with the hunter's.

_He is a gentle Alpha. A man of many names. A man with a kind face and a posture that is unassuming and open. A man good with horses and unwilling to harm._

Something strange was seeping into Cole's chest and it was unknowable on its surface. An emotion he was certain he couldn't be feeling but it wriggled its liquid body in through the infinitesimal cracks in his heart leftover from past tragedies. Somehow. Somehow, though every logical part of him pressed against the worm that had slipped inside, his instinct began a subtle, whispered chant.

_I must protect him. I must keep him safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good morning, everyone. This chapter has that strange quality that some chapters have where...nothing _happened_ (though plenty happened). Anyway, if you liked it, hated it, whatever: Feel free to comment. Also, pop by my Tumblr, [J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/), for writing, Omegaverse, and headcanons. If you have something you wanna ask, don't be shy about it.
> 
> For those affected by Hurricane Maria, stay smart and _stay safe._ For those who would like to help, [The New York Times ran this article about relief for Hurricane Maria.](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/world/americas/hurricane-maria-donate-charity.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur) Please consider donating to the relief efforts.
> 
> Also: _Please do not consider this chapter an invitation to discuss your personal religion. No offense, but I don't care. I have a lot of characters with a lot of different religious views._


	8. Chapter 8

Gabe could tell that Harper was getting more and more restless as the day wore on. He merely grunted when the doctor presented him with the finished hare skins and he went about all of his other business with a stiffness that was unlike him. His faith in Gabe's protection was nearly nonexistent and it was only too obvious that the blackened part of his fear was slowly spreading through to his consciousness. The emotion could do many things to a man and for Harper, it was a dulling rather than a sharpening—he was startled twice by Gabe's motions as the light around them faded into a deep red hue, the shadows of the desert as long as the howl of the desert dogs.

When the sun was fully below the horizon, Gabe watched Harper sitting near the fire with his fingers tapping over the butt of his pistol. His anxiety wasn't prominent in his scent but it was there. It was ebbing and flowing, heightening every time the Alpha quit his tapping to straighten a little, his eyes scanning the depths of the darkness for movement or shadows that ought not be there. He was looking for strangeness. The unknowable.

Gabe watched him while he watched the desert, heedless of the way the doctor allowed himself a feast of him. A half-inch of a black beard over his cheeks and chin and a little trailed down to his neck. A light poncho over his shoulders that was rucked up so Gabe could just barely see the gun on his hip. The heavy steel in the holster glinting nearly the same color as the glint in Harper's eyes. A hunter. An _Alpha_ , no doubt. A man who changed those around him and expected no change in return. A man who touched the world around him and shied from any touch given. A man who expected decisive control, even if he had to kill to get it.

Gabe found himself watching Harper's lips for a little too long and he tore his eyes away, staring into the fire to distract himself from those thoughts that he'd tucked safely away until now. He'd been an Alpha since he was twenty and though he was certain it was no mistake...sometimes he thought that it should have been. He was big enough. He was strong enough. He had the Alpha's out-going nature. He had every instinct that should make him a good Alpha. A good and honest man. He'd gone to the West without any hesitation. It was a land of mystery and adventure. Things Alphas loved. Things _he_ loved.

Elvira had been beautiful and alluring and a fine young woman who'd seen in him things he thought he'd lost a long time before. A boyishness that she brought out and forced him to live. The memory of her scent, stolen in secret as she offered him her wrist behind her father's house, sent a small shudder through him.

_Desert flowers in the sun. The sound of rushing water through a wash. The call of an eagle soaring over the prairies. The tickle of sweat on the back of his neck while he sat on the back of a mustang, watching the meadow grasses sway as the prairie dogs tittered and argued amongst themselves as they popped up from their burrows. The hot smell of the land. The slight burn of his skin as he gained a deep bronze color within it. A dozen native words for the love between an Alpha and their Omega, whispered into the softness of the curls at her temple._

He fisted his fingers and tapped them against his forehead. All of the time, she'd been keeping Powell in the wings. And what kind of Alpha plays second fiddle? He willed himself desperately to put it all out of his mind. Elvira's duplicity was almost unbelievable. Fickle creatures, Omegas were called. Fickle and vindictive and deceitful but _Elvira,_ the belle of Talton—the most beautiful Omega that had ever graced the west with a dainty step. Blonde and pale and delicate and pink in all the right places. She had laughter like the flutter of butterfly wings and lips so soft, silk would seem as course as sandstone.

Could she have truly been saving some of that laughter for Powell? For another Alpha? For days after he'd fled Talton, he had poured over every moment she had spent with him, trying to see _something_ in those memories to betray her. Something that would have shown her to be as disinterested in him as that which would make her nestle herself firmly into the arms of another. He had entertained that perhaps it had been more her father's idea than hers for her to wed him. After all, he was a doctor. He was well-learned with glowing references. Powell was a laborer. He worked within the mines. Not that such a profession was not just as noble but it was much more dangerous. She could have likely been bonded and widowed before she reached thirty—a state that a rare Omega in the west should not have considered ideal.

Yet. Here he was. Elvira was gone. More than just gone. Dead. He took his hand from his forehead and unfurled his fingers, staring at them while the corners of his mouth dipped lower. He grappled with the meaninglessness of it all even as he grappled with the thought of the demons which had torn at his ankles that night, dragging him down to the foot of his bed, tearing at him until he had sunk through the wooden planks of the floor while he gave no fight. The darkness and the red and the sensation of a hundred hands passing over his body, pulling at him as if they could pull him into Hell—or wherever they might have been. His mind had gone beyond the tulle veil and he had _seen_ what no man should have ever lived to see. A journey not of mind or body but of spirit.

_But there was no blood._

He stared at his fingertips and wiggled them in front of his nose.

_No blood on my hands._

“You're certain of this...salt?” Harper asked, shocking him out of the bleakness of his thoughts. The man had stretched out one of his legs, no doubt taking turns with them. Alphas had such very long legs, of course, and to keep them crunched up next to a campfire for hours was in no way conducive to a good night's rest.

“Of course,” he replied. “It's black salt.”

“Black salt?”

“Yes.” Gabe offered no explanation. Such a thing would be wasted on a man who cared not about the idiosyncrasies of some witchcrafts. Black salt was the kind of thing that was kept to sting the bottoms of the feet. Nothing that meant them harm could come across it and it was a small trick that a Beta in Chicago had taught him, a woman named Annabelle who called herself a good Christian and winked at him when he'd visited her home for a bad cut upon her finger only to find hidden in her cabinet a stash of black candles. He cleared his throat. “There's also some dried raspberry stems and thorns made into a powder.”

“Oh.” Harper was silent for a while, his eyes moving from the desert to the fire. He watched a few of the dry pieces of wood crackle before he asked Gabe a silly question. “So...you know how to curse people?”

“Knowing how and actually doing so are far removed,” he replied, humoring him. “Yes. I know how to place a hex.”

“And how to break one?”

He raised his brows. “Do you believe yourself hexed?”

Harper allowed him a small smile and even a blow of air that could have been a laugh. “Mayhap ' _vexed_ ' is more accurate.”

Gabe related to the statement so he nodded, knitting his brows while he contemplated the thought. Of course he was vexed—a witchdoctor creature was stalking them and had, at least temporarily, reduced Harper to his most basic form—Alpha. If there was something more vexing that that alone, Gabe did not know what it could have been.

Suddenly, faster than Gabe could think to even move, Harper's gun was out of its holster and in his hand. The click of the hammer was what snapped Gabe into a state of high alert though Harper's shoulders loosened when the warm breeze carried with it the earth-toned nature of Ahiga's scent. He holstered the gun when the firelight revealed the pensive man who looked down at the ground at the border of Gabe's circle.

“It might work,” he noted in a flat tone, carefully stepping over it to leave it intact. “I'm sorry to have startled you, Alpha,” he said to Harper while he approached, giving a nod to Stanford who regarded him with suspicious eyes.

Gabe scratched the side of his head and motioned to a blank spot next to the fire. “Sit with us, friend. Any news of Chooli?”

Ahiga sat and his dark gaze met Harper's hand where it rested on the butt of his gun. “It is refreshing to find a man who does not put all of his faith in his gun. Perhaps you've been given a lesson about an Alpha's pride.” He turned his head to Gabe. “Chooli is not changed...though it makes us wonder what has happened to her pup, if she has not killed it.”

“Forgive me,” Harper said, sitting up further and allowing his light poncho to cover his pistol, “why would she kill the babe?”

The man regarded Harper with an assessing stare, moving his head slightly as if trying to read the way he might respond. “The way to become what is hunting you is completed by ritual and murder. Must be someone close to you. Must be part of your clan or kin.”

Gabe flicked a small stick into the fire and asked softly, “How long ago was she missing? Unmated. With child... Is it the child of the witch?”

“We did our best for her. Her belly began to grow and she would not talk of it. She had been taken in the night in her hogan somehow and it was known to be a child of curse. It is perhaps shameful to admit that we were all a little relieved when the ending came and Chooli was not found in her home. But she is unchanged and she seems as though she would like to move on from this. To forget it.” He bobbed his head as if that were the end of it and Gabe let him have that. “I came here as the elders in the village have discussed that it would be best if—”

Harper grumbled his interruption. “We're leaving come dawn. Won't be a bother.”

Ahiga's long flat mouth tilted down at the side and he rolled his eyes, turning to Gabe to finish his thought. “It would be best if we packed you both up with a few things for your protection. My father also would like to come and give you a blessing. We will come early. Before sunrise.”

“Thank you,” Gabe replied with another nod.

When the Navajo took his leave, Gabe pinned the hunter with a lifted brow. “They don't hate you, you know.”

“They should. They should hate all of us.”

“What good would that do anyone?”

Harper couldn't answer that question and he didn't even flick a glance in Gabe's direction, still focusing out into the desert, searching for some darkness that was out of place. Unwilling to tie him up again, Harper determined that the best course of action was to take turns for sleep. Though it would leave them both at a disadvantage of mutual exhaustion, it would at least be an even one and the creature could be kept at bay. Though, Gabe thought wryly, Harper did not offer the use of his gun and Gabe's watch was merely just that—watching.

He was awoken halfway through the night to take his half of the watch and in the dim light of the campfire, he rubbed his eyes to rid them of the grit of slumber. The black velvet of the night sky was cut only by the pricks of stars and the strange glowing fog that enriched its canvas with a tinge of deep, luxurious blue. He had seen many beautiful things in his life and things that he thought were beautiful at the time. The organization of New York streets with glowing gas lamps and the fashionable architectural designs. The gilt and marble of the Muir Hotel with its stained glass and magnificent opulence. The way the small waves of Lake Erie gently lapped against the shore with fresh, clear water on the coastline of Buffalo. The gallop of dozens of strong, virile mustangs as they thundered over the plains of the American west. There was nothing quite as beauteous as this—as a desert sky that stretched taut over the landscape as if a tapestry upon a weaver's loom.

He scanned the open expanse around them before he settled his gaze upon Harper's sleeping form. His hat was over his eyes, resting on his forehead and the bridge of his nose in a somewhat precarious fashion that Gabe amused himself with for a little bit as he wondered at being able to knock it off with a well-thrown pebble. His slow, sleep-laden breaths were evenly timed and accented with quiet, almost imperceptible snores. Even in sleep, an Alpha was an intimidating presence with his head propped up, his neck safely hidden, and his long legs crossed at the ankles while his hands rested linked on his belly. He was clearly sleeping and still, it seemed at any moment he could wake, tip his hat from his eyes, and have his gun drawn and ready to fire. A dynamic just as unpredictable as an Omega, he thought. Placid with a teeming energy underneath. _A dormant volcano._

There was a shift of something. He thought at first it could have been something he heard with his ears but in his heart, he knew it was something he felt inside more than something he sensed with his body. He turned to look out toward the dark shadows of the desert and with his heart leaping and lodging straight into his throat, he stood, frozen as if he were nothing more than a frightened Omega. It was a childlike response but he had no time to reflect upon it. Nearly fifty yards from their camp was a shadow that did not belong that stood solidly as a man—tall, built like an Alpha with features that were entirely indistinguishable at such a distance. Icy emotions crisped the edges of his fear and froze his jaw in place, unable to even speak to gain Harper's wakefulness.

_Yee naaldlooshii._

He stared at it, the dread inside him tripling with the fantasy that he might see it move. That it might move faster than he could stop it. That it might come directly towards him and pay no heed to the barrier he had set up. He could not dare shift it from his sight or surely _surely_ it would come to him. Surely it would wrap deformed, changed claws about his throat.

_Skinwalker._

A being that was once a man and yet Gabe did not see it that way. A man was malleable. A man he could deal with. A man knew reason. Did this witch? Did this being that had forsaken his own people and murdered his mother and father know reason? Was there anything he could have done to prevent a stalking, horrifying presence?

The thing did not move. For a second, he thought that perhaps his mind was playing tricks upon him. He thought that perhaps the thing in the desert that looked very much like a man could have been just a play of the light. But no. Not this. The desert was filled with odd things and strange shapes but most of them were at _knee height_ being bushes and rocks and the odd, straying lump of cactus. This was an Alpha. This was a man who was no longer a man but a creature that shifted between forms unnaturally through dark powers beyond anything Gabe had ever learned or seen. It was desert magic—something given and learned from old, wretched gods.

_A story to tell to children to keep them from wandering off._

The black, grotesque emotions that roiled in his guts and his chest must have come to burn in his scent and it was enough to wake Harper even without sound.

“Pruitt?”

He couldn't speak. He couldn't stop staring at the thing, abjectly terrified in a purely fantastic notion that any movement of his body or any sound from his lips would send that ghastly _thing_ careening through space with no touch to the ground, devouring him into a pit of unending awakening.

_I've seen it. I've felt the touch of demons upon my skin, dragging me down into the abysmal depths of my own hell. It's waiting for me. Darkness. Charred and lurid darkness._

“Pruitt...” Harper said, his voice closer. He was standing now, peering over Gabe's shoulder into the desert. “Blast it all...” the man grumbled as he always did. “That's it...that's the...thing.” His breath was somewhat short and Gabe heard the click of his gun cocking. “It looks more...human now.”

The doctor had to admit, the thing did look somewhat human in its shape and there was at least that. The simple guise of humanity,for that was the basic form of it, after all, was what it hid behind tonight. Surely Harper didn't think he could shoot it with a pistol at such a distance. A rifle would have been more apt to hit such a target but it seemed Harper hadn't one to speak of and as the thing had not come any closer, there was nothing to be done. Even Stanford had kept his ground as he stood, staring at the thing with his ears forward and his stance tense and murderous. Every wire of his body, every thrumming bit of the stallion's energy was poised to come head-to-head with a creature of dubious nature and origin. He was brave. Much braver than Gabe.

At length, as they stood together with his fear wafting about them as a pall, mingling with that terror that leaked into Harper's scent, he found his voice, feeble and half-whispered.

“Please don't shoot at it.”

“I won't shoot at it until it gets itself close enough for a good shot. I won't waste bullets on the son of a bitch. Besides that, it could just be some idiot from the village looking to spook us out before daybreak.”

“You know that's not true.”

Harper knew it but he would never come to admit it. The fear in his scent was enough to betray his true thoughts. He knew that the thing was the very same as that which had attacked him in the desert. That which had made him no more than the beast he held at bay with conscious thought.

Gabe swallowed, still staring at the thing. “It can't come inside the circle. In my bag I have a few bundles twined together. Find one. Toss it into the fire.”

Harper did as he asked and the tang of sage smoke began to swirl about and tickle Gabe's nose.

Stanford pawed the ground and blew impatiently, his ears flicking back while he dared the creature to move, itching for a fight.

“Shhhh, Stanford,” Harper murmured, going to his horse to calm him with a soft touch on his shoulder. It was never going to be enough. If only a horse or a man could have been eased by a mere touch when faced with the unknown bleakness of black magic.

 _Black magic._ The Alpha took in a deep breath and held it to calm his own electrified mind. He gulped, horrified to find that he'd made a breath of a sound while doing it, betraying his disruptive unease through more than just his scent alone. As his heartbeat calmed from its wild pace, he felt embarrassed of his visceral reaction and though he kept his eyes upon the creature, he brought his brows down to chastise himself within his mind for that horrible fear. If it were naught but black magic, there were plenty of ways to combat it. A power that was more than the old gods. A power than was more than the God of Christians. It was something every man, woman, and child held within their own soul. A shine. A light.

He moved to his bag and pulled out a small packet, different from the one he'd used to make the circle. He poured a small amount into his palm and flicked it out in its direction, his imagination conjuring a delicate though powerful white light that skittered out with the powder to the witch in the night, flashing over it and focusing acutely upon where it stood.

“Shoo!” he said, having not come up with any sort of poetic verse and most certainly not for something of this nature. Nearly as soon as he said the small banishing word, the shadow vanished without flitting from one side or another, sinking almost as if it melted down into the hard packed sand. He breathed out a sharp sigh of relief and turned to find Harper next to Stanford, the two of them, Alpha and stallion, looking at him with a pensiveness that could not be begrudged.

They said nothing more and Gabe sat by the fire, picking a few more small pieces of wood scraps to place upon it before Harper joined him and carefully laid down again, placing his hat over his eyes after giving the doctor an expression of veiled gratitude. He didn't understand it. Not a whit. But something like that wouldn't stop him from appreciating it for what it was. After all, he should have been trying to kill him.

Hours passed and there were no more signs of the creeping shadow of a man. Just as the sun began to rise in the eastern sky, painting the morning in brilliant purple and red hues, the men from the village came. Harper packed Stanford's saddle bags and got him ready to leave while Gabe accepted small tokens and gifts from the medicine men. The hunter could mostly ignore them until it came time for a small blessing which had Gabe chuckling when Harper was unceremoniously jostled about by the crumpled elderly natives, kept in place while they chanted over him. It was a kind and worldly gesture of them and though Harper didn't seem at all grateful for it, Gabe thanked them profusely and promised Ahiga that they would go safely and that, if possible, they would kill the creature.

“I doubt that you will be able to,” Ahiga mentioned. “You do not have the knowledge to do so.”

“If he was once a man, there must be some way to kill him.”

“I know of only one way. There are none who have the ability here and if not here, then nowhere.” He looked at Harper and spoke in a low tone. “I hope he is as distrustful of his bullets as he is of other men.”

“One can hope...I suppose, that one would come to out-weigh the other...”

Ahiga left him with a soft and secret smile before he gathered the other men and retreated back to the village as the morning sun came fully over the mountains and bathed the desert in hot, though comforting, light.

Their true journey back to Talton had begun with all the strangeness that a quest toward oblivion could muster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. It's Thursday. Rest of the day is coffee, skyrim, and Tumblr. Feel free to come send me asks or talk about fiction/Omegaverse/writing. My Tumblr is [J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com).
> 
> For everyone reading, thank you so much for your continued interest! Make sure to comment or pop by my Tumblr! I'd love to hear from you!


	9. Chapter 9

There was a familiar dull throbbing in his chest every time he looked at Gabe and saw him with his hand pressed over his lower belly. Their journey was slow, almost leisurely, and it was a pace half set by Gabe himself who could not walk overly fast for his injuries. To ride would be even worse with the saddle constantly against him and the rock of a horse's gait pulling and stretching exactly the muscles he found to be sore. Guilt racked him and it did him no good to remind himself that the doctor did not actually blame him for what he'd done.

He couldn't think of a single bounty that had caused him so much trouble. Sure, he'd been shot once and winged two other times. There was a good quarter inch off the side of one of his ears from a stray bullet that could have drilled him through the brains. At least that would have been quick. It would have saved him from this nightmare. The time the Quincy Slaw gang charged at him from across a field, six to one and shot his horse out from under him was high up on the list. The poor devil of a mustang had been a good companion if not a little skittish and Slaw himself had nearly run Cole down. The positive side of that was that he was quick on his feet and even quicker with his pistol.

He glanced at Stanford who walked next to him, his lead slack and his ears relaxed while he picked over the rocks. Most men he encountered remained fearful of the Paint, calling him a devil and giving him a wide berth. Stanford usually made every attempt to keep the appearance and nipped at anyone who came near.

_Why is Pruitt different?_

He felt his mouth flatten significantly and his brows come down. It was no witchcraft. Stanford saw him as he was—it had to be. A horse could not be tricked. A horse could not see something that was not utterly true. He, however, had no such ability.

They stopped for a few minutes to snack late in the afternoon and Cole decided to clear the air while they sat in the shade of a nearby mesa. “They tell me you're a man of many names.”

“I've been given many names,” he replied, pain giving his voice a distinctive strain.

“So when they say it, they mean that you've been given names by the Indians. So your English name, Pruitt. That's your true name?”

He chuckled and picked at the woven fabric of his trousers. “Yes. Pruitt is my father's name.”

“I see.” He chuffed out a laugh. “And all this time I thought you were some specter of a man...you were very clever when you ran.”

Pruitt was still smiling. “Not clever enough.”

“Not _heartless_ enough,” Cole argued. “If you'd left that Omega to die, you could have eluded me for much longer. The stench of her would have made you difficult to track. My nose is good but the odor of rot is hard to ignore.”

“Do no harm.”

“Ehn?”

“Do no harm. It's...an oath we doctors take. We cannot do harm and the meaning is as much in the passive as it is in the aggressive. To ignore someone in clear distress is to be guilty of causing the distress in the first. I cannot do harm.”

He nodded. “So you cannot curse a man?”  He could have just as easily asked how the doctor could have brought himself to brutalize a woman and her lover, but he hadn't.

Pruitt shook his head.

Cole tilted his head in amusement. “Tell me, doctor, what exactly is the point of witchcraft if you can't curse a man?”

“Is that all anyone ever thinks of? If there is such a thing as Black Magic, then surely by that logic there must be a thing as White Magic—mustn't there? Everyone is always so obsessed with death and destruction.” He grumbled while rubbing his palm over his belly, “I suppose I should not expect any different from a man with a gun on his hip.”

That pricked him and he stood up, signaling that it was time for them to be moving along. He tried to ignore the way Pruitt stood gingerly, his face pinched. As if Pruitt could judge him. After what he'd done—if he'd done it. He studiously avoided that thought, working around it in his head. He would arrive in Talton and have a trial. The Marshal would give Cole his bounty and the rest was up to the lawyers to decide. There were lawyers in Talton just as there were rats. There were lawyers _everywhere_ just as there were rats. The only option for Cole was to cut and run as soon as he got his due. He would ride further east as fast as he could and he would shoot any man or talon-wielding creature that got in his way.

_Will that stop it?_

Of course it would, he frowned to himself. Of course a bullet could stop it. There was nothing on earth that a bullet—or a few bullets at least, he conceded when he thought of the moose he once encountered—could not stop. All of this about magic or witchcraft—it was all... He frowned even deeper.

Nothing made sense. If he were to take it for how it was, if he were to accept that it was all real, what did that mean for him after all of this was over? Was this fear going to rule him for the rest of his life? He put a hand over his heart and looked at Stanford while he walked. Was there always going to be this knowledge inside him that there was something out there that could hurt him that he couldn't stop?

_Quit thinking like this. Every unexplainable thing is just a product of your own rot. Every thing that you cannot control is an admission of weakness. You're not weak. You're an Alpha._

“Why witchcraft?” he mumbled. “Seems like a Beta thing to do.”

Pruitt frowned at him. “Why would you say that?”

“An Alpha has the power to change things. If you cannot talk your way through it, you can force your way through it. Witchcraft is done in darkness to subversively affect change. Is that not what it's for? Betas and Omegas who think life is unfair and hope to change it by way of ritual?”

“Faith has no gender,” he replied. “If an Alpha priest believes in the power of prayer, do you condemn him for his witchcraft?”

“Christianity is not—”

“Witchcraft? Oh, Alpha, I think you are about to have your eyes opened. Think about what happens in a church and tell me that it is not a ritual invoking the will of an old god for good luck and health. Tell me that when you place bread in your mouth as a symbol of the body of a man, it is not a ritual of veneration for an old god and a powerful spirit who is said to have created a legendary man who taught humanity the way of his craft.” He laughed. “Amulets of power depicting witches said to have performed their witchcraft so convincingly as to be proven to the faith and thus worthy of celebration and used as protective spirits. A book of shadows filled with stories and prayers none of which can be convincingly proven—examples of how one can worship this old, jealous god and rituals to be performed by his willing disciples. How could you dare look at me and tell me that Christianity is not witchcraft?!” He stopped walking and nearly stomped his foot, his tired eyes flashing in the sunlight with his rage. “ _Christians are the worst of witches because they are convinced that they are not!_ ”

“Alright,” he conceded, doing so truly to make Pruitt's scent calm, the earthy tone suddenly horrifically tinged with the scent of hot metal. “Alright. I ken.”

“Do you?”

“Yes...”

He didn't speak to Pruitt again until they'd set up camp, the coming night bringing with it a hazy, drawn sort of fear. The circle was created and they'd set down with some safki in their bowls, quiet and thoughtful. Perhaps it was that they were both scanning the darkness for the creature that stalked them but the silence, save for the sounds of the desert, was oppressive. It seemed only to enhance rather than diminish his terror and he could only find himself enormously relieved when Pruitt spoke to him once again. It was strange the things one could find themselves hoping for, even if the hope was below the consciousness.

“Do you think you might read to me, Harper? I've no books and if the firelight is bright enough...”

There was no point in keeping the fire low to confuse their follower—if the thing was not of this plane and was in any way a decent tracker, it would find them regardless—so he shrugged. The request was simple and he knew the feeling too well. An urge to leave the world for a little while. The need to feel something more through the words upon a page. That he seemed a simple man to Pruitt had stung a bit.

_“I hadn't thought you be a man to read much, Harper.”_

He waited until Pruitt was laying on his back, staring up at the starlight before he reached into his satchel and picked out the book. He thumbed through the worn and yellowed pages, flicking over the softness of their old edges until he bit his lip and glanced up toward the doctor again.

It was difficult to know which to choose. It was likely that Pruitt should find some hidden meaning behind his choice and thus he did not wish to choose any that should give the man any sort of insight into his own soul...but how? How could he choose any of them without Pruitt coming to some sort of conclusion or another? By the by, _all_ of them seemed to have something in common with his own human experience. That was what such poetry was _about,_ was it not? It was why he kept the Beta's poems _with_ him and would have lamented the loss of the book as strongly as he would have lamented that of his sidearm.

He cleared his throat and opened to the page he had chosen, pausing a bit before his beginning in his hesitance.

_In visions of the dark night_

_I have dreamed of joy_ _depa_ _rted_ _—_

_Bu_ _t_ _a waking dream of life and light_

_Hath left me broken-hearted._

 

_Ah! what is not a dream by day_

_To him whose eyes are cast_

_On things around him with a ray_

_Turned back upon the past?_

 

_That holy dream—that holy dream,_

_While all the world were chiding,_

_Hath cheered me as a lovely beam_

_A lonely spirit guiding._

 

_What though that light, thro' storm and night,_

_So trembled from_ _afar_ _—_

_Wha_ _t could there be more purely bright_

_In Truth's day-star?_

When he finished, he was ready for Pruitt to comment upon it. He was ready to be told that it was such an apt description for him. He was ready to be told the opposite, that the man was surprised by his choice. He was ready to have the doctor entirely dismantle everything about him and pick him apart as if he were some corpse to be preserved or examined upon the mortuary table. He could have held his breath for the wait but the blow to his entire identity was never to come and he sat in silence while Pruitt stared, thoughtfully at the sky, looking at the stars as if they were the _last_ he would ever see.

He let the silence roll into the night and watched the fire flicker in front of him, putting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm. The dogs howled and Stanford shook his head, leaning down to sniff at some foliage some feet away. Hours passed and Pruitt dozed off, his hands laced upon his stomach and his breath even and deep.

The first hint that something had gone awry was that Stanford had stiffened, his ears suddenly snapping to attention while his head lifted, the side of his face pointed out toward the desert to examine the terrain. His foot stomped hard upon the packed dirt and Harper almost didn't look. He didn't want to know. The grotesque thing standing just outside the ring of the firelight was dancing about in his head as if daring him to turn around and look at it. He felt his fear clinging to his skin, as sticky as tar and as cowardly as a chicken's plucked feathers set upon it. He took in a deep breath and held it, feeling his lower lip beginning to tremble with how gutless he felt. Finally— _finally_ —he turned around, peering over his shoulder and willing nothing to be there.

It was not as he imagined it, dancing and daring just outside the firelight and both he and Stanford let out a similar startled cry, the horse rearing back upon his hind legs while Cole simultaneously stood, twisting his body about and tripping over his own feet, stumbling backwards until he had fallen, landing almost on top of Pruitt who came awake with a jolted start.

The _thing_. _Yee_ _naal_ _dlooshii_ _!_ It was tall, taller than Cole and was fully within the firelight, standing with its hideous, misshapen toes, _talons_ , just barely an inch from the edge of where Pruitt had made his circle of salt. Its clothes, or perhaps its very _flesh_ seemed as if it were melting from its body in strips, hanging loose over its frame while it stood upward, a macabre amalgamation of animal and human, feathers, fur, and flesh combined and standing fully in his sight. His wide-eyed stare moved slowly up the length of its body and came to rest on the beast's face, a seemingly formless mass that seemed to shift and change before his own eyes in the flickering light, oddly morphing as if constantly shaped by a creator's hand. It was at once both wolf and raven. Both coyote and human. Lizard and bear. It's grisly maw opened and emitted a foul sound—a screech beyond all measure of comprehension and it held one gnarled arm and taloned claw up to point menacingly over the barrier at the both of them, its yellowed and rotting teeth bared underneath yellow-ringed black-voided eyes.

After the thing had released its dreadful cry, it shifted its form, moving as if to run on all fours, its motions stunted and strange as a human should have been in such a position though it was not slowed for the efforts. It was as if a shadow, hurling itself into the night and gone before he could have collected himself enough from his puzzled and horrified state to draw his pistol.

He wished that such a thing was all he had noticed. It's ghoulish appearance not enough to distract him from another piece of the ghastly and lurid spectacle. No. _No._ Perhaps it had been his imagination? Perhaps it was wishful thinking that led him into such hallucinations. It was not that he had not seen the thing. The monster. That was real and it was as grim as it was tangible. No dream was this but a waking nightmare. The terror made all the more real by the piece he could not wrap his mind around. That while the creature had pointed with one misshapen talon toward the two Alphas entangled within the circle, its other malformed phalanges had held near its hip no other than the pup that Pruitt had delivered only days prior. The naked cherub nestled against the loathsome flesh of its sire, holding a despicable portion of its skin between his tiny fingers.

There was a ringing present in Cole's ears while he gazed blankly at the space of sky where the thing used to stand, his back settled upon the side of Pruitt's stomach while one of his hands gripped the man's shirt and the other held the Alpha's inner thigh. He could almost hear the pounding of Pruitt's heartbeat while the man no doubtedly did the same as he, staring uselessly into the desert while Stanford pawed and paced.

His voice felt shaky and raw. “You...you did see it...did you not?”

“Yes,” was Pruitt's whispered reply.

He gathered himself, swallowing audibly and taking long, stable breaths. When he noticed that one of his hands was gripping Pruitt's inner thigh, he let go suddenly and drew that hand to his chest where he could still feel the hard, excited beating of his heart. One of his labored breaths came out as a harsh, humorless laugh and ended with a wheeze. “For the love of Mary...”

Pruitt moved, sitting up and helping Cole to sit up, positioning him up until he could move around enough to set some water to boil, building up their small campfire with grace and efficiency. More light was the answer, of course. When the water was properly positioned, the doctor moved to Cole's left side and touched his shoulder first, carefully squeezing at his upper arm and moving down toward his elbow. “Any pain here, Alpha?”

“N-No...”

“And your chest?”

He looked down at his hand over his heart. “No...I...”

“Good. Numbness? Anywhere? Hands, feet?”

“No.”

He seemed to relax. “I'm going to make you some black tea. I'll make it strong. It's good for a man after a shock.”

He wanted to point out that Pruitt should have been just as shocked by the whole scene as he was but then, he thought, the man had seen so many strange things in his life...perhaps this was not the strangest? It was a curious notion and it distracted him from the memory of the shifting, formless face and the void-black and yellow-ringed eyes that glowed and burned through his mind. Those eyes were that which would haunt him through the rest of his days and as soon as he had gazed upon them, he had known it sure as he knew his own name. Those eyes were the eyes of a creature beyond that of humanity, that of heaven or earth. _Devil's eyes._

He took the tea that Pruitt gave him in his sturdy little mug and cursed under his breath when he found his hands still slightly trembling from the encounter.

“Drink, Alpha,” Pruitt urged, pouring some for himself.

He didn't question it and did as he was told, finding the taste of it good. He could not say whether or not he could feel himself being calmed by it but it was not the worst thing he could have done to alleviate the discomfort of his experience. It was diverting, at least, and he looked at the doctor beside him who was fixing him with an inexplicable expression. It was familiar. He'd seen it before. Pensive. Thoughtful.

_He's taking care of me._ It was a blank thought and only later did it echo through his mind as if it were odd. _It is as if I am not the man who would take him to his death. If I were to die, he should have my gun, my horse, and all of my supplies. He could go anywhere with them. He could do anything. Yet he will not allow me to be hurt._ His brain tumbled over and over, battered over a washboard and sent through a wringer. This Alpha surely could not have been the same Alpha that had torn Elvira Bergund's heart from her chest. _This Alpha could never have hurt an Omega. This Alpha who is good with horses. This Alpha who is gentle with a kind face. This Alpha with many names._

_This Alpha who looks at me as though I am the last of something._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an update. It's been a bad day.
> 
> If you're looking to follow a writing/omegaverse blog, be sure to check out my Tumblr: [J.D. Writes](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jdwrites)


	10. Chapter 10

The next three days were spent in travel and, much to Gabe's delight, Harper read to him every night, though sometimes it was probably a terrible idea to have gotten their imaginations riled. The skinwalker had decided on distance for now, moving as a shadow about fifty yards away from them, silent as ever but choosing to make itself known despite. It openly stalked them, wearing on Harper's patience though the Alpha would never admit it. As the thing became more familiar to him, his fear had begun to dissipate and Gabe thought that it was most fortunate for the man—he was a strong Alpha with a steady hand and a stable mind. Faced with something he could not rationalize, he would do what he could to survive: Accept it and choose courage.

That it was a trait Gabe found attractive was his own damned problem. That cold, steely determination that replaced any of the frustration in Harper's scent was a dash of something exhilarating and it was all he could do not to be caught staring. That he could entertain thoughts of another Alpha like this at his age...what would his father have thought? That he could entertain thoughts of an Alpha who'd once brutalized him...what would his _Oma_ have thought? Despite all of the questions that loomed in his mind, he found himself becoming increasingly melancholy not for the thought of death itself but for the thought of an opportunity lost—what would it be like? To be touched with affection again?

Every time Harper caught him looking, he tried to quickly flit his eyes away, hoping that the man hadn't noticed his wandering gaze. It was difficult not to allow his stare to settle upon the one different thing. The one _interesting_ thing in his line of sight. It was only natural, was it not? Although that he was finding himself looking at certain aspects of the Alpha—those particular portions being the intimacies of how his thighs were fitted in his trousers or the peek of his collarbone from the small gape of his shirt—was at least relatively disconcerting, even for him. If Harper ever even slightly entertained the idea that another Alpha could have formed such a perverse attachment to him, it should have been entirely obvious that the admiring glances Gabe was irresponsibly doling out were to form one. He had encountered deviants before and had read about them in medical texts which did, at least, make the attempt to treat them less patronizingly than some others but in no time of his adult life had he thought that he would have found himself to _become_ one.

Why now? Why Harper? Why not any other Alpha in his life thus far? Why should he only now come into sleep and dream of melting starlight and the welcome touch of Harper's hands over bared skin? Why only now did his mind conjure dreams of pleasured sighs and stubble-rough kisses? Why could he not find pleasure in the thoughts of a soft and sweet Omega? Why could he not bring forth a stronger desire for those sweet, inviting scents over that of Harper's raging wildfire?

He tried to keep his eyes on the ground as they walked to avoid the stray rattlesnakes and he kept himself ahead of both Harper and Stanford, leading them steadily toward the only town between them and Talton. It was a scrap of a place that was settled right on the edge of where the desert began to slope upward into the hills and the richest man in the town was the man who held the land with the most amount of trees. Gabe had forgotten the man's name as he had only stopped there for a single night and didn't care to become known by the locals but the bulk of the place's economy was in the meager logging industry that shipped out lumber to the other, more successful settlements that focused mainly on mining, such as Talton.

It was around midday when they arrived and by the manner in which they entered town, it was in no way discernible at all that Gabe was Harper's prisoner...though surely he had spoken to the townsfolk. Surely some would remember that there had been a bounty hunter following the kindly traveling Alpha doctor. He tried to avoid their curious eyes as he wandered with Harper down the main street, standing with Stanford as the hunter left the stallion tied in front of the saloon.

“You gonna stand here forever?” Harper mumbled, “Or do you want a drink?”

He didn't reply but followed the man inside. The barkeep spied him immediately and the Beta lifted one arching and judgmental brow.

_Of course he remembers me. He remembers the both of us._

“Two,” Harper told him, sitting down on one of the rickety bar stools.

“I see you've caught your man, Mr. Harper,” the Beta replied, picking up two tumblers and setting them up upon the bar. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured three fingers into each glass. “By the way you was talkin', I would have thought that horse would have been carryin' a little extra weight. Here you are buyin' the _good doctor_ a drink?”

The corner of Harper's mouth tipped up and he gave the Beta a wry expression. Flatly, he said, “Saved my life.”

The barkeep looked up at Gabe with a bit of poorly hidden surprise, “Well...I suppose he deserves one then.”

Gabe took it, staring the Beta down as he did so, keeping his shoulders squared and his back straight in an intentional Alpha power-stance. It would not do to have a Beta passing such judgments upon his character. Had he not been kind to the man? Had he not been unobtrusive and gentle-natured on his pass through? He sipped the liquor and did not sit until Harper bade him to.

Harper put down his coin on the bar, snapping the edge of it down upon the wood and jerking his head at the man as a signal to be left in peace. When the barkeep left them, the hunter sighed, contentment seeping into his scent. No. Perhaps not contentment. Perhaps some kind of passive relief. The kind that came from the sensation of reaching an oasis or reaching shore after having been at sea for a multitude of long days. Gabe settled in with his drink, expecting Harper's usual silence, surprised when the man spoke to him softly.

“A warm bed, Pruitt. That's all I want. Can you keep that thing out of this town or at the very least, out of my bed?”

“Yes...”

“Good. That's all I will ask of you.”

He nodded and wondered where _he_ would sleep. Perhaps the floor? Perhaps...in Harper's bed? It was a ridiculous thought and he cut it of immediately and shamed himself thoroughly to prevent any arousal from seeping into his scent. It would be much too difficult to keep himself from giving away his attraction should he be allowed to share heat under quilts. He decided not to ask and merely finished his drink, draining it while the Beta wiped glasses at the other end of the bar.

When they were finished, Harper led them both to the general store where he stocked up on oats for Stanford and foodstuffs for the two of them. They were about a four day ride from Talton and on foot it would take upwards of six days through the mountain roads. He made sure to stock the saddlebags full with supplies and then turned to Gabe with a heavy expression. “There's an apothecary...do you need to...”

“Yes.” If the man wanted to be protected, at least he knew what Gabe needed to have in order to do it. He could make plenty of his own supplies from natural things he'd collected in the desert but there were some things that were not so easily found. A good apothecary would have plenty of what he required.

The man behind the counter was just about as friendly as the barkeep.

“I remember you,” the Alpha stated flatly. “I remember him too. Glad to see he caught up with you. Heard what you did to that pretty little Omega.”

“Just the willow, please,” he asked, keeping his low tone as civil as possible while his eyes drifted to the counter. The submissive gestures weren't enough.

“Thurgood Bergund is going to have your guts cut out of your belly right before he lets you take the short drop. That's what I've heard. You deserve it too, you cowardly pig-fucker.”

Harper tapped the counter with one finger, cutting the Alpha with a hard stare. “Give the man what he wants. He's got nothing to say to you and his money is as good as mine.”

The man's cheek muscle twitched with annoyance and he did as he was told, his politeness manufactured and transparent as he completed the transaction. It wasn't a surprise that any of them would have known the grisly details of the murder and it was certainly no surprise that most of them felt terribly betrayed by him. After all, he had seemed so quiet. He had even helped one of the local women with a sore that hadn't been healing properly. That a man could be simultaneously capable of kindness and murder was something that didn't mesh well in the minds of simple folk...even if one was an Alpha and capable of a distinctive feral state.

After they left, Gabe began the first few steps toward the inn only to find that Harper was headed in a very different direction. Keeping up, he followed until he realized where the man was really going.

“Harper...you can't get them involved with this...”

“I can do what I please.” The hunter ignored Gabe's huff of annoyance even as he was opening the door to the brothel, the light scent of Beta girls and the smokey scent of incense wafting from inside.

“You'll be putting them in danger.”

“Mayhap.” He shrugged while Gabe followed him inside.

It was dim compared to the unrelenting western sun and Gabe had to blink a few times in order to get his eyes to readjust to the strange atmosphere. He was comforted by the mild, calming scents of the Betas but it was not enough to quell the anxiety that foamed in his guts. It was reckless to allow another to be embroiled in the revenge of a skinwalker and that was just what Harper intended on allowing. If he thought that Gabe was going to stoop to sprinkling salt about a whore's bed, he would be eating crow before long.

A hearty and strong Alpha scent hit his nose and they were greeted by a woman of clearly imposing height. She was taller, even, than Harper and she gave them both a good once over from the door to an ornate parlor. She looked nothing like any madam Gabe had ever seen, dressed in men's clothes and yet with a ribbon in the mass of her hair. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

“Yeah,” Harper grumbled. “I wanna get a room for this sorry sod.”

Gabe balked and could have lost his breath. “ _Excuse me?_ ” He turned to the Alpha madam and put up his hands. “No, no. I assure you, I need nothing of the sort, please. I'm afraid we've wasted your time and I'm terribly sorry. My friend is mistaken.”

Harper put a hand out to stop him. “He's shy. Maybe you have a girl who's decent for that?”

The woman grinned, her teeth flashing white in the gas lamps. “I have plenty of girls who can cure a man of shyness. Though I'm of the mind that it may not be prudent to let one of my girls stay alone with an Alpha like you.” She arched a brow.

Harper snorted and began to speak, cutting himself off, “That's absurd, he's...”

_Harmless._

“You must be the bounty hunter. Awful kind of you to get a feral Alpha a good romp before his walk to the gallows. Mighty fine of ya, actually. But I sort of like all of my girls, you see. Leaving them alone with a man who's done what this Alpha's done...you can see where I could give pause.”

Gabe shook his head. “I _don't want_ a girl.”

“Oh, a _picky_ Alpha,” she teased. “You know, the Omega is extra. He's very sweet, but I like him even more.”

“No, no, _please_. Harper, tell her. I don't want a room. I don't want an Omega. I don't want a girl...I just...I'd like to...I just...” Every other word he could have thought to say fell out of his vocabulary and he was left stuttering only choppy bits of sound. There had been a time not so long ago that he would have jumped at the chance to spread open a willing pair of thighs and take his pleasure between them and now, here he was and he couldn't even find the words to express how much he _loathed_ the idea. Frustrated, he put the heel of his palm to his forehead and looked at Harper, at a loss.

The hunter tilted his head in question, obviously confused at his refusal. Gabe couldn't blame him. A man on his way to the hangman's noose should have been leaping at the chance to sate himself as much as he could. Like some sort of last meal, to indulge in these carnal pleasures was most likely of utmost importance for most Alphas.

“You might as well take to a bed,” the madam told him, crossing her arms and obviously amused at this turn of events. “Forgoing a good roll in the hay isn't going to stop them from stretching your neck.”

Was there no way out of this? His desperation stacked. He would have rather slept on the cold ground than in a bed with a lover who held no affection for him—a lover who was likely to be afraid of him for what they'd heard he'd done. No sensible whore would lay with him without it being demanded of them by their madam and their fear would make it impossible for them to enjoy his company—if they ever enjoyed any man's company at all anyhow. He imagined it was a near impossibility in a town such as this one, with so many customers that must have been of the repetitive sort.

Surprisingly, Harper came to his rescue. “He's sentimental fool, if you'll believe it. How else could a man have ripped his Omega's lover limb from limb?”

Gabe opened his mouth in indignation but was halted from his retort by the laughter from the madam.

“I see. Well then I should wish him luck. And for you, bounty hunter?”

“I should see to him. Thank you for your hospitality, short as it was,” he mumbled, bowing his head and putting his hat back on over the mess of his short black hair. With that, he led Gabe out into the sun and chuckled while they stood together. Rolling a cigarette, he spoke with humor. “You know, maybe you wouldn't be wound so damned tight if you got it all out of your system.”

“I can't make love to someone who holds no feeling for me.”

“You plowed Elvira, didn't you?”

He felt his cheeks warm. “There were a few...moments...between us that were _intimate_...”

“She didn't love you.”

He started, jerking to look up at him. “She did! Surely she could have hidden a feeling or a scent but she could not have _conjured_ one...could she? She was _incapable_ of deceit! You cannot think—”

“I cannot think you even believe any of the cock and bull that just came out of your mouth. Alpha, look at what she's done to you. She kept a lover and intended to marry you. She drove you to your most desperate moment and filled you with rage enough to kill her. Ruined your life, she did. Sent you to the grave.” He lit a match and held it up to the tip of his cigarette, his words mumbled around the other end of it. “Omegas. They'll ruin it all for you if you let 'em.”

“And let me guess, you've always been more preferential toward the Beta girls, then?”

“I've had fair share of both.” He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, inspecting it while smoke curled from his lips. “Had my heart broken a few times when I was young. We all do, don't we? Part of growing up. I came to the realization that I had more an obligation to myself than to indulge in shallow rutting...I suppose that must be what you suffer from as well.” There was appreciation in his tone that sent Gabe's heart fluttering up into his throat.

“Then you understand my reluctance...”

“I do. Though I have to confess, my motives were more selfish than you might have guessed.”

Gabe sucked in his bottom lip and raised his eyes to Harper's face, focusing on the strong line of his jaw. The gears clicked through his head and he replied softly, low enough that no eavesdroppers could have heard him. “You...you didn't want to be the last...”

“You didn't deserve that, Pruitt. You might deserve a hangin' but you didn't deserve what happened to you. Not that a night with a good woman or Omega could erase it, but it would at least give me some sparse comfort knowin' that you at least enjoyed yourself.”

Gabe felt a bit of laughter well up in his chest and he let it go into a low set of chuckles. “You're a good man, Harper. I've never met an Alpha like you before.”

He grunted and turned slightly toward Gabe, lifting the brim of his hat with his thumb to fix him with an peculiar stare. “And nor I, you,” he replied. “An odd pair we make, if I may say.” If Gabe wasn't mistaken—and he surely hoped he wasn't—the barest hint of affection lay beneath those words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got all the way to the end of this chapter without ever once even mentioning Lizard Baby. _Whoops!_
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has come by and asked me all of these really great questions on my writing Tumble, **[J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/)**. You're all invited. If you like the story, hate the story (don't...), whatever, leave a comment or come visit my tumblr.


	11. Chapter 11

There were things that were in the reach of mortal men and then things that were within reach to a mortal _Alpha_. Cole was usually fairly good at determining which things were which as he came across them and rarely found anything out of his grasp that he wanted. Now, he couldn't be sure of anything. The whole debacle had cost him much in mental fortitude and that he was able to acknowledge it made it that much more surreal. Even when he was able to sleep, he had dreams that made no sense to him—dreams that would have made any Alpha question his own sanity.

_Soft, warm skin. Masculine groans. Panting sighs. A comforting weight at his hips and gentle lips against the side of his throat. Hands over his thighs, breath over his groin, the flicking touch of a tongue._

He had awoken over the past few days foggy and overly aroused, his hand tucked into the front of his trousers and sometimes sticky with his spend. He hadn't come in his sleep since he was a lad and he was half-tempted to lay the blame firmly upon whatever was in the doctor's black tea, though he wasn't at all certain that such things were even possible.

_I hadn't thought a shape-shifting witch doctor was possible a few days ago either. Here I am._

He rolled his eyes at himself while he and Pruitt wandered to the inn with Stanford in tow, handing the tempestuous stallion off to the stablehand with a warning before they went in and ordered a good supper.

Watching the way that these self-righteous townsfolk treated Pruitt was certainly a lesson in patience although he knew it was ridiculous to feel the way he did. This instinct to protect and to comfort was nearly as alarming as the content of his dreams. Pruitt was an _Alpha_. That he had to remind himself of that nearly consistently was terribly unsettling.

_What am I thinking? Everything about this nightmare is unsettling. About the only enjoyable aspect about it is..._ His thoughts paused for a moment and he let his eyes come to Pruitt's face while the man curiously and openly watched a Beta girl tend to her baby. _...being with him._

A few days ago, he would have let his internal shame take over and berate himself for such a thought. Now, he admitted, he wasn't of the mind to care much about anything. This was the west. Death was only a breath away. If an Alpha couldn't have his own dreams, his own thoughts, without shame then there was no point in prolonging the misery of it. If he was to lose his mind, he might as well enjoy it while it happened and, aside from that, the image and sensations his dreams had conjured of the doctor's mouth coming over his heated flesh—it wasn't _harmful_ to have them... It was merely that to have them _come to be_ was one of those things that he found difficult to distinguish—was it something that was within his reach? It was more the _challenge_ that held his interest despite the conflict of his thoughts and his instincts. Any whore could suck on his cock, but to conquer this curiously intermittently submissive Alpha?

_Alright, don't get ahead of yourself, you randy bastard. It's unnatural. It's bizarre._

With a good meal in his belly, he paid the innkeeper for a room and then considered Pruitt for a moment. He didn't really want to leave the man in his own room—it would have been too easy for him to sneak out, but that rag of a bedroll he'd been sleeping in wasn't something he was willing to let him use in a decent room. He motioned to a young cowpoke at one of the tables and left him with instructions to keep Pruitt inside the rented room while he went and fetched some things. With an amused glance to Pruitt, he muttered low, “Don't give him a hard time, Alpha. He looks a skittish thing.”

Misunderstanding, the cowpoke replied with confidence, “You can trust me, Sir! Ain't no criminal gonna get the drop on me, no way!”

Pruitt was still chuckling and shaking his head when Cole left, off to the general store where he picked up a new bedroll and ignored the whispering of the Betas who peeked at him every chance they could while they thought he wouldn't notice. It was truly a mystery to them why he hadn't arrived with the doctor's body slung over his horse and it was not new to him to hear the judgments of men who had never collected a bounty in their lives. “ _I would have killed the man, and I would have enjoyed doing it.”_ Such a man as the one who could casually say it was not a man who would choose to pursue bounties. Cole sighed through his nose and when he came back to the inn, he found the cowpoke leaning against the door frame as he chatted with the doctor.

“Well, you see. My grandmother always talks about using some kind of...I guess it's some kind of tree oil...” he rambled.

“Oh yes,” Pruitt replied, out of Cole's sight in the room. “I think I have exactly what she probably tells you to use. Any decent apothecary should carry it but I'll give you some of mine. I've no immediate use for it and in a few days,” he gave a nervous laugh, “I suppose I won't have use for anything...”

“Oh...”

“If you were interested at all in your grandmother's home remedies, you should speak to Mr. Harper. In a few days, he should be in possession of most of my worldly goods and he could probably have my bag sent to you... I wouldn't mind.”

“You certainly are cavalier about the...the thing.” The young Alpha rubbed the back of his head and in the action, noticed Cole standing in the hall. “Oh...Mr. Harper! I've done as you asked, sir.”

Cole handed him a coin and squeezed his shoulder, moving past him into the room to find Pruitt sitting comfortably on the bed, sifting through the clinking jars in his bag for whatever oil he wished to give to the boy. After the doctor had passed out his cure and the boy had thanked him and gone, Cole put his hat on the side table and dropped the new bedroll to the floor. When Pruitt went to move, he lifted his hand to stop him. “Don't bother moving for now. When we sleep, you can move, for now, enjoy a bed. If you don't want one with a pretty-smelling whore in it, you'll have to deal with a wretched Alpha.” He laid down, feeling Pruitt's heat only inches from his body. “That is, unless you'd like to order a bath.”

Pruitt smiled and Cole took the hint, forcing himself to get up and order one. The two of them lounged on the bed while the tub was brought in and filled with steaming water. When it was finished, Cole motioned for Pruitt to go first and cautiously averted his eyes as the Alpha was nude.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he sighed while he sank down into the hot bath. “There is truly nothing more gratifying than the simplest of human pleasures.” He groaned, laying his head upon the tilted edge of the metal tub while steam rose from the surface of the water. The sound was uniquely titillating and Cole let himself enjoy it, smirking at his own reaction. “I promise not to be overly long, it's just that when something is the last...well...you know.”

“I know. Take your time, Pruitt.”

“You know,” he responded thoughtfully, “you might call me Gabe.”

“Why?”

The Alpha shrugged, the movement sloshing a bit in the water. “It's nice to be familiar. We've known each other for a few days and you might think me mad but having a witchdoctor stalking us has certainly made us more familiar than we ought to have been already.”

“I think I'll call you Pruitt.”

The man seemed miffed, falling silent and turning to quickly soap himself, scrubbing judiciously the way Cole thought only a doctor could. When he was finished, he stood up and Cole flitted his eyes to the wall as the man reached for one of the towels the staff had brought up, drying himself and then wrapping the material about his waist. Cole took it as his hint to bathe and stood, shedding his clothes while Pruitt began putting his back on, the side of his mouth squeezing a bit while he considered the trail-dusty clothes.

Cole grumbled, “Better to put them on. The last thing we need is for that thing to take us by surprise and have us running about this damned town in our birthday suits.”

Pruitt was laughing even as he was pulling on his clothes and even that sound, in itself, was going to haunt him. He widened his eyes at himself and shook his head, wishing to dispel some of these strange feelings he'd begun to have. It wouldn't do to let him find out how thoroughly he'd disarmed his own captor, especially when they were still four to six days from their destination. He could call the man “Gabe” about as well as he could call the man “lover” or “darling.” It would bring him much, _much_ too close.

_The doctor, as with many, was dangerous for his charm almost as much as his wit and his skill with a pistol._

He had been willing to consider that perhaps the man really was guileless, but now? When he was so close to being completely won over? The only hope for him was to take him to Talton, drop him in the hands of the marshal, collect his bounty, and run like hell as far as he could as fast as he could. He didn't want to know what happened to Gabriel Pruitt after he arrived and left him in the hands of the law. He wanted to assume that the trial was fair and the justice was swift and he wanted no part of a hanging.

He lathered himself with soap and tried to think about other things, successfully distracting himself until he could finish his task and get out of the now lukewarm bathwater, foggy with the dust and dirt from the both of them. He pulled on his clothes and with the sunset streaming in through the western window, he shooed Pruitt off the bed and pulled back the covers, sliding into the cool sheets and propping himself up with a few of the lumpy pillows the inn provided. When the doctor was clearly set to work in mixing up some kind of oil, he pulled out his book and read a passage from it while Pruitt smiled at the words. Cole had long-since stopped worrying about what the man might glean of his life through his choice in poems—or poets, for that matter—and started simply opening the book to a random page. When he was finished, the Alpha was carefully spreading a thin layer of the oil along the threshold of the door, moving then to the windowsills and pouring a thin line of it around the fireplace hearth as well.

Satisfied, the two of them slipped down into their sleeping arrangements, Cole sighing audibly as his back thanked him for the comfort of a _true_ bed. It hadn't been so very long since he'd slept in one but all the same, it felt as though he were laying upon the finest of the clouds in heaven. His exhausted body fell into a deep sleep nearly immediately, stumbling directly into one of those fast-becoming-familiar dreams.

_Warm eyes staring up at him. Lips pressed against the pale, thin flesh of his inner thigh toward his knee. He was on his back, his legs spread open as if he were an Omega. He didn't even fight like he should have been. He lay back with his hands lazily above his head while Pruitt—Gabe, he was Gabe here—breathed over his heated skin. He felt himself moan, the sound a plea for something. For a touch. For a mouth. For erotic words spoken in harsh, Alpha whispers. He could smell that smokey leather scent and he let it fill him, crying out with a trembling jaw when he felt the first touch of that teasing tongue over his swollen manhood. He wanted nothing more than this—to be touched, to be possessed, to feel what it felt like to break every rule his God-fearing mother ever warned him to obey._

_But dreams were fickle things and the pleasantness faded into a deep, blue blackness that blurred his vision and made him blink, his dream eyes refocusing upon Gabe's loving gray eyes, ringed in red, his lips gently suckling over the tip of Cole's cock tinged with a bluish-purple. His pallor was ashen and to Cole's abject horror, the ghastly corpse-like form of Gabriel Pruitt that pleasured him was nude save one gruesome accessory—his noose._

He came awake with a startled gasp, sitting up suddenly and pulling himself to push his back against the flat wooden headboard. There was a scrambling sound at the foot of the bed, Pruitt flailing about to get up and Cole began to smell the mixture of their mutual panic as the man came to his feet. Through the darkness, he could see three small dark lumps on his lap and his panic was mounting, he was a mere second away from batting at the dark blobs but Pruitt stopped him, diving upon the bed with a knee between Cole's legs, grasping at both his wrists to stop him from beating at whatever was on the bed.

“Harper! _Harper!_ ” He struggled mightily against Cole's _Alpha_ strength, summoning his own and fighting hard to keep him at bay. “ _Calm yourself, Alpha!_ ”

He wanted to simultaneously scream and yell his question: _What are they?!_ But his throat wouldn't make any sounds whatsoever. He struggled until he recognized that he was at the physical disadvantage, his brain filtering through tactical procedures for this fight long enough for him to rationalize the situation and come back to himself. The things were not alive. They were not moving. It was dark enough that he still could not make out what they were. Calmer, with his emotions tapering and his muscles trembling, he gathered himself enough to finally ask.

“Wuh-what...what are those?”

“If they are what I think they are, Alpha, you'd best not touch them...and I'd best come up with a better way to protect us.”

He was suddenly very aware of how close to him Pruitt was. His wrists were held in tight hands close to his shoulders and the doctor was nearly on top of him, close enough that just a slight dip of the head would have put Pruitt's nose right up against the skin of his throat. The remnants of his dream, a strange mixture of arousal and horror had collected in the small room and lay underneath the scent of his panic. In a flash of irrationality, he almost wanted to tilt his head to let the Alpha scent him but there was something stopping him and it was beyond his ken. With a deep breath in, he let the familiar Alpha scent of Pruitt's body calm him, finding it bizarre that it had such an effect in the first place. “Get off me,” he mumbled, shoving at the man until he could slide out of the bed and shuffle off toward the window, wrenching it open to air out the stink of two stressed-out Alphas.

He watched curiously as the doctor moved to the end of the bed and reached beneath it, picking it up and pulling it over the hardwood floor to bring the headboard away from the wall. Pruitt explained as he rummaged about in his bag. “We've been visited, obviously. The best way I can manage to make certain it doesn't happen again is to make a circle around the bed...that is...if you're alright with that.”

He was suggesting that they share, Cole thought and for a moment, his thoughts turned toward the lurid moments of his dreams. He turned toward the open window again and shoved his hands in his pockets, unwilling to say anything about sharing a bed with the other Alpha. He wanted both to agree to it wholeheartedly and push the idea into the category of “impossibility.” That he could allow himself to be so near...to feel what he felt...to let Pruitt scent how excited he could become... It wasn't something he was willing to entertain.

“Harper? Is this alright?”

“You can't fit the bedroll into the circle?” He glanced around at the floor and sighed when he noted the size of the room and the impossibility of his suggestion. “Never mind. Do what needs to be done.” He moved to the small desk and lit the lamp, twisting the light up until he could see clearly what had been on his lap when he woke.

_Three rattlesnake heads._

He laughed a dry, rasping laugh and put his eyes in his hand, rubbing up and down over his face. It was all so _absurd_. He wanted to be able to recognize that the thing—yee naaldlooshii—had been _inside_ this room. He wanted to be rightfully angry about it. He wanted to scream in frustration, to shout, and to blame everything on Pruitt. It would have been too easy to do. It would have been too terribly simple to tell Pruitt that it was all his fault. That maybe _he_ had been the one to place the heads. That he had been the one who had _lost_ the heads. That he had been the one who had brought Cole out into the creature's lair in the first place. But he couldn't.

_Why can't I?_

He knew the answer to that and it raked at his nerves.

Without touching them directly, Pruitt dumped the heads into one of his jars and tucked them safely into his bag before he gestured to the bed and watched Cole get himself situated on one side under the covers. When he got in, Cole could feel his warmth across those few inches between them and it made the tension stirring about in the room that much greater.

“We should keep the light on,” Pruitt suggested and Cole mumbled his agreement, feeling like a child for his vague and infantile fear of the dark room. There was a pause and then Pruitt asked softly, “You saw the babe...did you not?”

“I did.”

They had not discussed the details of their close encounter, the event still so fresh and vivid and absolutely terrifying. To revisit it was something that neither of them were willing to do—at least until now.

Pruitt continued, “It's not dead...what could it want with a child?”

Cole crossed his arms over his chest. “You're the one more qualified to answer that. What a witch could want with a pup is anyone's guess.”

The mild Alpha shrugged. “I suppose it at least cements one thing.” He looked over at Cole. “Chooli hasn't...turned into one.”

Cole closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing himself to turn onto his side away from the man beside him. He couldn't do it. He didn't _want_ to do it. What he really wanted to do was be closer.

_What I want is that mouth on my cock._

He quashed the fantasy and wondered worriedly if perhaps somehow Pruitt had been slipping him a love potion. Or a lust potion... Something that would make him feel these strange, unnatural things. He cleared his throat. “Maybe it just wanted a pup.”

“But to what end?” Pruitt asked, gesturing slightly with his hands near his hips.

“Maybe to no end. Is it unthinkable that a man would want a son?”

A pause. The doctor was thinking, turning it all over in his head. Perhaps it was wrong to characterize the being as a man but if Pruitt's description had been accurate, the thing _was_ or at least _used to be_ human. It was only natural to have the wish to procreate...to breed.

_And here I am with a fantasy over an Alpha..._

“Well,” Pruitt sighed, “I suppose I hadn't thought of it that way.”

They were quiet for a time but neither of them slept, staring up at the ceiling next to each other and filtering through their thoughts. There was a constant gnawing and niggling thought that kept coming back to him over and over again. What the older woman in Talton had said to him when he'd asked about Pruitt. How her eyes had become misted and uncertain when she spoke of him. The way she seemed almost at a loss over how she wished to portray what he did.

_“You know, sometimes he could put his hands on you and cure you. Well...with a bit of this and that in your tea sometimes too. He was good about it though. Made all that hokey witchcraft sound very much intelligent when it came from his own words... Used to ask me about my dreams...what I thought they meant.”_

He swallowed and cut the silence with his voice, drawing Pruitt to turn his head to look at him. “Do...do you ever have...dreams that...” He cut himself off with a slight grumble and then shifted to rub at his face again, finding some comfort in the motion. “That don't make any goddamned sense?”

The Alpha chuckled with an easy smile that Cole refused to look at directly, preferring to keep it in the corner of his vision. “I don't think dreams usually make much sense. They're more...symbolic.” He shrugged. “Only you can interpret your own dreams. Though if you wished to tell me of them, sometimes it is easier for one to interpret them if they've said them out loud or written them down.”

Cole felt a deep flush fill his face. “Never mind... They're...not important.”

“Alright, Alpha.”

He was finally able to pry himself onto his side facing away from Pruitt, huddling into himself in the warm room, confused and muddled with his frustrations sparking between every emotion. He had never believed in religion. He had never believed in God. He had never believed in anything like prayer before in his life, but this night he made an exception.

_Please don't let me have this dream again...not while he's next to me. Not while he's so close. Please. Please. Please._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [fans self] Whew. Is it hot in here? Maybe it's just rattlesnake venom...
> 
> There was a lot going on in this chapter even though it was less than 4k. If you have any thoughts at all you can either leave a comment here or visit my writing/Omegaverse Tumblr, **[J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/)** to share how you felt about the chapter, what your theories are, or whatever! I do headcanons, drabbles, and I answer whatever asks get sent my way. Feel free to say hi. I promise I do not bite as long as you're polite.


	12. Chapter 12

The scent of him had been at the first annoying, and now Gabe found it exhilarating. The deep, dark rush of smoke through cedar and the rage of an autumn wildfire. Crisp and smokey and burning and as he came awake to it, he pushed against it, having shifted in his sleep so close as to nearly lay on top of him, his nose and lips pressed intimately against Harper's throat. Knowing all of this, he was intoxicated by the man's scent, so bewildered by it that he could not stop himself from taking those long, covert breaths just to save this moment, to keep the Alpha from waking.

_The sun blotted out into a bizarre blood orange disc through the smoke. Barren wastelands ravaged by fire. Shimmering, glimmering coals as if the whole of the earth were the bottom of a smoldering campfire..._

He could have moaned but he held it in, swallowing it as if he were embarrassed of it. By all rights, he should have been. If anyone had come into the room to find them together so close, even just in the same bed, they'd likely be run right out on a rail. Despite everything in his body and his heart telling him to _stay_ , he slowly backed away and rolled to the other side of the bed where he sat up and set his feet down on the floor. There was no use in letting the man wake up to find a nose plastered to the side of his neck, seeking some kind of strange and twisted comfort from the very man who was bound and obligated to deliver him to mob that would, inevitably, kill him.

He gathered his things while Harper came awake, stirring and sitting up, groggy after his restless sleep. He rubbed at his cheeks and shuffled about, watching Gabe shave and waiting his turn for the water. He didn't speak but his glances were furtive and telling.

_He knows I scented him. He wasn't asleep. He knows._

Gabe grew flustered, his hands beginning to shake. He tried to gather himself enough to finish his task but nicked himself, sending a drip of sanguine blood to the edge of the white china bowl before him. His distress was too apparent.

“Doctor?”

He grunted in response, refusing to look at the man who'd sent him into this state. At the very least, Harper seemed to understand and left him alone, wandering off to the window to peer out over the small settlement's main thoroughfare, watching the movement on the streets with those steely blue eyes. If he were lucky, he might have been able to spot a marshal coming through and he'd be rid of Gabe before he even reached Talton. It was a dark thought but one that wriggled and festered at the back of Gabe's brain even as he was able to finish his shaving. He reached into his bag and dabbed at the cut with some of his ointment meant for just that purpose and gave Harper the go-ahead while he took up that man's spot at the window.

“Anything interesting?” he asked, fingering the scratchy lace curtains.

“Nothing as I could see. We'll head out as soon as you're ready to. If you don't have anything else you'd like to pick up while we're still here.”

“No...” Despite that leaving meant that he was one more step closer to his death, he still couldn't help but feel grateful to do so. Grateful to be away from everyone else. To have Harper to himself again. It felt wrong but not for the obvious reasons that stared him in the face constantly. He felt selfish—as if having Harper all to himself was something he shouldn't wish for at all. He felt his mouth screw up a little bit. “You...you mentioned once that you'd had your heart broken. An Omega?”

Harper seemed ready for the question but took a second to pause anyhow. “A man doesn't leave his home and set out on the hunt for dangerous criminals without a better reason than the money. Yeah. It was an Omega.” He sighed. “She wasn't an Omega when I first fell in love with 'er. The prettiest little Beta you ever set an eye on.” He gave a humorless chuff. “I should have known she'd present as an Omega. She was as wayward as she was beautiful. Her father didn't like me a whit but she didn't care. Kissed me in the meadows. Made me feel like I was unstoppable...”

Gabe nodded, overly familiar with the sensations described.

“When she presented, she was the only unmated Omega in the whole damned town. You know how things are out here... She figured she could do better than a poor laboring boy like me.”

“Did she?”

“Depends on who you ask. If you ask her father, he'll say yes for the love of money. If you ask her, she'll say yes for the sake of her pride. If you ask her mother, she'll weep into your arms for an hour and ask you, as if you'd know, what her little girl did to deserve a man like that.”

Gabe grimaced. “Ah...the price of an Omega's heart...or her womb.”

Harper growled low in his throat, the sound a distant grumble of displeasure at the thought. “And your Omega...Elvira...”

_Elvira..._

“What about her?”

“You're on the other end of that. You were the doctor. The prominent man. Powell worked in the mines, so I was told.” Harper's eyes were hard on him as he wiped his face with the towel and set it aside, finished with his shaving. “Forgive me for telling you so bluntly the other day that she didn't love you...but she didn't love you. There were enough of her friends about who couldn't see wrong in telling me the story after you'd run off...she'd been bemoaning her upcoming wedding with you, sorry to say.”

He felt the edges of his mouth ticking downward. “That's not an easy thing for me to hear, Alpha.”

Harper nodded and picked up his things, walking with Gabe behind him down to the inn's main room, nodding toward the keeper and walking out the door into the harsh sunshine that splashed out over the settlement, fading everything it touched. As they walked to the stables, Harper spoke over his shoulder. “At least she was decent at hiding it. I've thought about it, Pruitt. I've found myself unable to think of much else sometimes.”

“You've thought of Elvira?”

“Of Powell mostly,” he confessed. “Mayhap what you done...” He trailed off, gritting his teeth, reluctant to share his thought.

“Come now, Harper,” Gabe pleaded.

He lowered his voice as they reclaimed Stanford from the inn's stable and walked him out to the main street. “Mayhap what you done was just what you done to Powell. I've a mind that you ought to get a good lawyer in Talton. There are lawyers just about everywhere and you give 'em enough trouble, that magistrate will hear you out.”

Gabe's heart sank low in his gut. “...I...I appreciate the suggestion, Harper, but Talton _will_ hang me as soon as I cross the town line.”

“They've got to give you a fair trial by way of the law.”

“You ever seen a man put on a horse and hanged in the midday? Who hasn't in this god-forsaken country? Did he have a trial?”

Harper was quiet, thinking deeply. “The marshal will take you and keep you until you've had a decent trial. A fair one. With a defender.”

He couldn't help his incredulous laugh. “A lawyer who thinks I ought to swing as much as the next man in the crowd. What kind of cock and bull do you think a lawyer is going to feed a jury to ensure I don't hang?” Stanford sensed his mounting ire and nosed him gently as if to distract him. He reached up and petted the wily stallion, scratching at his ears until he nickered while he walked.

“I've _been_ thinking about it,” he repeated. “Her friend, the plain little red-haired one, she was very interested in telling me that Elvira was goin' to be tellin' that boy of hers—that's Powell—that she was making up her mind and that she would be married to you. I got the impression that previous to that, she was entertaining the idea of runnin' away with him.”

“And this helps me?” he asked, raising a brow.

“O'course it does. You may not have torn Elvira's heart out. Mayhap Powell was the one that did that.”

“But you still think I killed him.”

“Who else?” he asked with a small shrug. “In either case, you've got to go back and I've got to take you there. You've got an Alpha's murder to explain if you can.”

He felt heat in his chest. “Well I _can't._ ”

“Then I guess that's what your lawyer is for...to make up something believable enough that a jury will let you free.”

“Even if I killed him to avenge her, I've still killed a man.”

“And if I'd put a bullet through your heart and taken you back to Talton draped over Stanford instead of walkin' you upright, I would in no way be charged as a murderer. If Powell had done it and ran and you came after him for the bounty, you'd be hailed a tragic hero for it...why would that be any different if you happened upon him the moment it happened?”

He was quiet and remained that way as he tried to peel back the layers of his memory to find anything, anything at all, that would show him what had happened that night. All he could remember were those hideous black hands that pulled him beyond the veil. The place where nightmares were born. Where demons made their nests and somewhere _yee naaldlooshii_ was well familiar with. He'd never seen nor felt anything like it before and had no memories beyond it save for his stumbling. A yell? His yell? Elvira's? Powell's? It was too vague. It was too blurred and bizarre. He remembered the head-lolling panic and every inch of his body tensing with fear and wildness. He could have been feral. But how had he made it to her home? Had he come in through the door? Had he crawled through her window? Had he been seeking her for help? He remembered the smell of blood. Seeing the bodies, suddenly self-aware and vaguely piecing together what he must have done... The horror. The sheer _revulsion_.

“I did this...” he choked out. “I killed them both.” He picked up his pace and left Harper and Stanford behind him as he walked the dusty road that would eventually lead them to Talton. To his fate. Something he had to deserve.

_Why else would I walk so far so willingly? Why else would I make nearly no attempt at escape?_

There was another reason and it was so pressing and so _right_ and so _wrong_ and so unlike everything he'd ever been taught about life in the great big world...

_Because he's my mate._

He balled up his fists beside his head and pressed the heels of his palms to his temples, screaming out a primitive and barbaric cry. As it echoed across the landscape, he gave a nearby rock and savage kick to send it skittering out into the sparse forest that became denser to the east. His fit left him in a tapering sort of way and he bent over, folding at the waist and staring down at the ground, frowning hard. He should have been fighting tooth and nail. He should have been doing anything he could possibly do to get away from this man but all he wanted, _all he would ever want_ was to be as close to him as possible. This was unheard of. This was some kind of devil witchery. That was some sort of _curse_ , it _had to have been_.

_No. Stop. It doesn't have to be a curse and you know it. This has been inside you this whole time. This has always been part of your body and mind. Wanting a strong, powerful Alpha has been in the cache of your fantasies since you were a lad and now that you've found him and now that you're honestly sure that he could be your mate, you're what? Scared?_

“ _Yes,_ ” he whispered to himself.

He heard Stanfords hooves behind him and he bent his knees to crouch on the ground, still holding his head, curled almost into a little ball. Harper spoke to him plainly.

“Did you, Alpha? Did you kill them both?”

He didn't _want_ to answer that. He didn't want to tell him that he didn't know. That he wasn't _sure_. He wanted to tell the damned fool that _of course_ he did. He wanted to somehow sabotage what _this_ was and give himself a reason to run. A reason to take his chances to get away somehow or face the wrong end of Harper's gun. He would rather have died than have to admit to this man that he was on the edge of falling _in love_ with him for no good reason whatsoever and beyond all rationality. More than that, he would rather have died than have to face Harper's cruel derision for it. Hanging would be a mercy if he were to face such a reaction and bear the weight of his shame.

“ _It's my fault they're dead._ ”

Stanford blew and lowered his head, nudging his soft equine nose into the back of Gabe's neck.

Harper seemed unmoved, even with Gabe's burning scent nipping through the piney forest air. “You don't remember.”

“No.”

“Do you remember before you were feral? Do you remember seeing them? Together?”

“No...I...” he felt his cheeks blazing hot. “There is a tribe...close enough to Talton. I was there all night and they had invited me to join their circle. It was a celebration of sorts. Very spiritual. I'd been joining them and helping to treat them with the medicine I'd learned through my travels. They were very accepting of me.” His fingers dug into his hair and pulled. “On my way back, it was as if...as if _hands_ were coming out of the ground. As if the grass itself were black and a wriggling mass of limbs and fingers. I...I went into my home and I tried to laid down but they were grabbing me...pulling me...I've...I've _seen things,_ Alpha. Things you've only seen in your nightmares...real.”

“You know, I've wondered what that shit does to a man.”

Gabe rubbed at his forehead and felt like maybe he was going to vomit. “I remember the bodies. I don't know how I got to her father's house. I don't know how I came to be in her room. But there wasn't any blood on my hands. No blood. None at all. But I'm the reason they're dead. If I'd never come to Talton, her father would never have pressured her to marry me.”

“Would have been someone else,” Harper replied and this time his voice was not as flat. There was something underneath it—the same emotion Gabe had heard under it the other night. Affection? Some kind of empathy? Whatever it was, he hated it, and he wanted _more_.

_God, I want to scent him. I want to press my lips against his throat. I want to nip him. I want to push against him and feel him aroused. I want to have him. I want him to be mine._

“Come on, Alpha,” Harper said, the words encouraging. “We can get a few miles in today at least and find some shade in these trees. It'll be nice to be out of the sun.”

His legs felt like lumps of clay but he stood anyway, finding support with Stanford who didn't mind that Gabe leaned on him. As he walked, he whispered to the horse, soft enough that the Paint tilted an ear to hear him and Harper walked ahead unaware. “ _The man believes that you'd kill him one day. I hope that you don't. I don't think you will._ ”

Stanford made a soft nicker.

“ _Sometimes it is more difficult for us to accept that someone might want to love us with fury than hate us with it._ ”

They walked. The trees grew more dense and shaded them from the harsh rays of the sun, sending light raining down in dapples that glittered over the unpaved and dusty trail road. There were no birds singing in the trees and the silence save for the whispering of dry leaves in the wind was pervasive and unsettling. Yee naaldlooshii was following them. It would follow them it seemed to the ends of the earth and it was something Gabe could feel more than he could rationalize. He glanced at Harper, watching the man walk with his sure and steady gait. It was not a worry for himself, he thought.

_I'll be dead. There will be nothing for me to fret soon. But Harper will be alive. It will hunt him. It will curse him or kill him if it can._

There was a dull and unfocused pain in his heart and he turned his head toward Stanford's neck, pressing his forehead against the animal's warm skin. He kept his silence as they walked and even when they broke their pace for a quick luncheon. Harper didn't seem to mind. Likely that he had guessed the truth, anyhow. That the closer they came to Talton, the more nervous Gabe would have gotten. It _was_ true, but not for the reasons the man should have expected. It was not his _own_ death that caused him such concern, though the weight of it was present upon his shoulders as well.

It was night before they spoke with any meaning again, the dusk settling in as Gabe formed their protective circle and Harper prepared their supper. The doctor was looking at his bag with a blank stare, turning everything over in his mind and trying to flesh out what he wished to say as the darkness fell around them, filling the woods with an inky blackness that was more a presence than the lack of one.

“I should like for you to have my things, Alpha,” Gabe said quietly.

Harper inspected him.

“There are things in there that will protect you. It will not cease to follow you after I am dead. Not if it has the mind to kill you...or to curse you.”

The bounty hunter was uneager to discuss Gabe's death, it seemed and he did not respond, merely nodding slightly at the gesture.

Peeved, the doctor asked teasingly, “How many men have you seen hang, Harper?”

“Too many.”

“I've seen a few myself... I do wonder what the best method is to go about it. I should rather they tie my legs together. Kicking is so unseemly. Then again...so is managing to have an erection...have you witnessed anything of that ilk?”

Harper's mouth ticked up a little on one side. “I've seen it.”

“If I cannot keep my dignity in death, I'll be embarrassed into eternity.”

The hunter chuckled low. “You face the noose and your largest worry is not death but...?”

“I've no wish to have an entire town witness my body's embarrassing reactions. It doesn't matter that I shouldn't care because I will be dead. There is such thing as spirit and if I am forced to stand by idly and watch a crowd ogle over my corpse's...” He sighed through his nose, frustrated. “A man's got the right to some dignity, doesn't he? Even his corpse should be respected.”

Harper laughed a bit as he handed Gabe a bowl of safki, settling himself against the trunk of a nearby tree to sup. “You are a strange man, Dr. Pruitt.”

He ate, letting the admonition stay lingering between them. Frustrated and nervous still after he'd finished his meal, he set the bowl down and faced the fire fully, keeping his gaze away from the other Alpha. “Why did you...this morning...why did you not stop me?”

“Hmm?”

“You were awake. In my sleep, I had come to you and...and I was scenting you. Why did you not stop me?”

The Alpha said nothing.

“Do you think you deserve it? To be treated like an Omega? Do you think...” He felt a deep burning in his heart, an anger that was hard to qualify. “Did you think I should take my revenge on you? Did you think that becoming a victim would help you shed your guilt? Did you think I would _rape you?_ ”

“No.” The word was clipped and strong and Harper's brows were tightly knitted.

“No!? Then why didn't you stop me?!”

That wildfire scent grew sharp with annoyance. “You'd refused a partner to your bed. You've gone a long time without a lover. You've no one to touch and the nearest body would do. No harm in a little scenting.”

“And what if there was?”

“You're a gentle Alpha, I know that now. You've said yourself that you cannot harm.”

“And what if I didn't want to harm you?” He covered his eyes with his hands to forced himself to keep his eyes averted. To keep himself from facing that hideous and grotesque rejection. It was spilling out now. Everything he'd ever wanted to keep to his grave, pouring out into the dark of the night to the one who was never supposed to hear it. “What if I wanted to hold you?”

He heard Harper take in a sharp breath. “I'm an Alpha. You're an Alpha.”

“Do you think I don't _know that?!_ ” he snarled, keeping his head down. “Is it so wrong to want? Is it so wrong to hope for something?! I know! I know it's disgusting. I know what everyone thinks about it but I can't help it. I can't help it. If it's fine by you, I'd like to pretend I've never said a word about it. I'd like to walk into Talton and hang and know that if there is a Christian God, at least I know the road to Hell. I feel as though I've been walking it already.” He felt his shoulders trembling and all he could think was to whisper that dark Beta poet's words, the first that Harper had ever read to him. _“'_ _In visions of the dark night, I have dreamed of joy departed-- But a waking dream of life and light hath left me broken-hearted...'”_

He was jostled hard as Harper took the shoulder of his shirt and shook him, the sharpness to his scent so thin it felt as though it could cut him. His low growl was edged in _Alpha_ , “ _Do you patronize me, Alpha? After all this, you vex me!_ ”

Gabe made to retort, snapping his head up only to find himself unable to respond and he was violently pushed, hitting the ground as Harper came over him, powerful and angered, pinning him down by his shoulders and heedless to Gabe's fruitless defensive pushes. Every thought he'd managed to have in those few seconds were spiraled into oblivion when Harper kissed him— _viciously_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was feeling depressed yesterday and I didn't feel like writing. Ended up writing this entire chapter instead of submitting to unhealthy coping mechanisms. I'm pretty proud of myself. Not only that but men. Kissing. Manly men. Kissing. Alphas. _Kissing._
> 
> Next chapter's gonna be fucking _scorching._
> 
> If you like this and you'd like to come chat about it on Tumblr, remember, my Tumblr is [J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/). Feel free to come by, send me an ask, tell me how you're liking the story so far, share with me some headcanons, and just come say hi if you want. I love to hear from all of you. If you're feeling so inclined, make sure to leave a comment right here on this chapter too. I try to respond to everyone.


	13. Chapter 13

He was growling low in his throat while doling out bruising and brutal kisses, forcing Pruitt's mouth to open as he straddled the Alpha and held him down. Pruitt's hands were against him, pushing but not struggling. They wanted this. Both of them. It was difficult to reason with his own mind, pushing and pulling, one side of him claiming that this _shouldn't_ be while the other side screamed that it _had to be._ Having his thighs open with another man between them, even if he was on top, was disconcerting and the realization of it made him pause, tearing his lips away from Pruitt's just long enough that the other Alpha took advantage, gathering his momentum and pushing at Cole until he'd toppled over. He struggled, fighting for control before he remembered himself and let Pruitt take the lead.

_Let him do this. You've done enough to him. Let him have what he wants._

He let his thighs go lax, opening around Pruitt's hips while he began to tremble beneath him, a pent up nervousness sending the chills through his body. Being pinned to his back was an experience he was not familiar with and not fond of and he fought every instinct to keep himself there, consciously willing himself to remain submissive.

Pruitt examined his face, ultimately trying to decide if he wanted to kiss him again but Cole wouldn't let him back out now. He reached up, dragging the man's face downward to claim him again, forcing their mouths together hard. Again. Again. Again. Lips. Tongue. Wet. Erotic. Sinful. He was painfully hard and, for the life of him, he didn't know how he'd come to this point, letting an Alpha between his legs. He had never let any challenge go untried and this one was just another. That he _wanted_ this—it was baffling. He gave out a strangled, anxious moan when he felt Pruitt push down, feeling the rigid length of his Alpha cock through his jeans.

“P-Pruitt...”

“ _Gabe_ ,” he murmured into Cole's mouth.

He groaned and closed his eyes, pulling his mouth away and turning his face to the side, heedless that it bared his neck while he did it. Gabe was gently grinding over him through their jeans and pressing his nose softly against the flesh of Cole's throat, moving until he could press a tantalizing set of hot kisses and nips just under his ear, the sparks of pleasure shooting straight to his groin as he angled his hips and grasped at the Alpha's shoulders.

“G-Gabe...” he felt his face flush even deeper than it already was, “Just...just do it...”

“I won't let you make yourself into some kind of martyr,” he replied, lifting himself up. Cole was about to panic when that heat left him, his body crying out for more while simultaneously heaving in relief, his heart aching at the thought that he'd said something horribly wrong. He found the doctor quickly shedding his shirt, tossing it to the side before he gripped Cole's hips hard, looming over him and putting that panic to rest. “I'm going to make you feel good, Harper. You want that, don't you?”

He glanced down at the place where his crotch was pressed tight against Gabe's and nodded with his shaking breaths. _Yes._ “Yes...I-I want that.”

“Are you going to fight me, Alpha?” he asked, reaching down to unbutton Cole's shirt, arching a brow when the man instinctively grabbed his hands to protect himself. The expression was enough for Cole to overrule himself, struggling against his own impulses to pull his hand away and let Gabe open his shirt, his bare chest heaving with shallow, anxious breaths. Gabe murmured down at him. “I'm not going to hurt you, Harper.”

He closed his eyes and tossed his head to the side again, balling his hands into fists when he felt delicate brushes of Gabe's fingertips over his ribs, sliding over his skin until the blonde had rasped the pads of his thumbs over Cole's sensitive dusky nipples. He gave a slight cry and consciously forced himself to raise his chin, the action feeling terrifically wrong to bare his throat to another Alpha. He couldn't sustain it for long and that fluttering desperation peaked when he locked his foot against the side of Gabe's leg and knocked him to the side, scrambling to come over him. At first, it seemed as if the Alpha would fight him but after a few seconds of struggle, Cole finally realized that the man was actually fighting with his shirt.

The doctor pushed upward, sitting up and tipping Cole back until he was practically sitting in the man's lap while Gabe harshly pulled his shirt down off his shoulders and discarded it. “How much of a fight will you give me if I were to pull off your—”

Cole growled, the sound deep and menacing and stemming from a rush of hard control.

“Alright, Alpha,” Gabe cooed. “Alright.” He reached down to his own trousers and unfastened them, sighing his relief when he eased them only a bit downward in order to release himself. “If you want me to make you feel good...”

He didn't want to look down and see it, the bulk of it standing hard and at attention for _him_. It was desperation, he thought. It was the need to feel before the hangman's noose. The furious picture of his dream made him uneasy so he did glance downward, his breath hitching and the pit of his stomach tightening at the sight of how large and how real it was, erect between the Alpha's thighs. He couldn't even think of how he would touch it, much less how he could ever allow something like it to pass through every mental and physical barrier to slide _inside him_. No. No. _No_. It wasn't going to happen. He was backing away, shuffling with his knees on either side of Gabe's legs and his weight unsteady and awkwardly shifting.

“Alpha...” Gabe murmured, his hands coming up to stay Cole's retreat but the hunter pushed those seeking hands away. He tried again, this time hooking his fingers into Cole's gun belt, pulling until the backwards movement stopped. He came to his knees, sitting on his feet to create leverage if he needed it, the two of them no longer touching save for those fingers curled under Cole's belt. Gabe's sex was jutting and visibly heavy, lengthy and reaching as if trying on its own accord to reach out. The unsettled surge in his chest that it created was swirling and unobstructed and he finally had reached the point inside him that insisted that he could not move further. What he wanted was weighed upon the imperfect scale against what he could allow as a man and as an Alpha. “Don't fear me,” Gabe said softly, interrupting his thoughts. “I'm not going to hurt you.” He spoke as if Cole were a skittish dog, abused in the past as unwilling to seek the comfort of a master. “When you've thought of this...what did you want from me? What made you kiss me?”

He swallowed, his voice spilling even without his whole and conscious approval of his words. “A...A dream.”

“A dream? Of me?”

“Yes.”

“What did I do? In the dream?” As he asked, his fingers slowly moved to unfasten the belt that helped him hold on. With Cole distracted, it would be much easier for him to get closer to what he wanted and the fact that the Alpha knew it and was going to allow it was enough.

“I...” He watched Gabe slide the belt away from him, feeling naked. “You were...with your mouth...” He blocked out the unpleasant bits of the dream and focused on the feel and appearance of a very living, very vibrant Gabriel Pruitt with his pretty pink lips worshiping his swollen manhood.

“With my mouth, Alpha? Do you...do you want that? Do you want me to put my mouth to you?”

_Would you? Can you?_ He felt his brows twitching where they were knitted together and chanced another glance downward at Gabe's groin. He couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to go near to it or to actively touch it. How could he rightfully expect that the man would have any other reaction than this one to his own sex? It wasn't as though it were _foreign_ , surely not. He would know just what to do to make Gabe scream in pleasure, but something inside him, something primal, was yelling at him that he could not.

“ _Alpha?_ ” Gabe whispered. “ _Can I touch you?_ ”

He swallowed more than once and couldn't bring his voice to the fore. He released a small nod and let his hands fall to the doctor's shoulder's, gripping hard against bare skin while he closed his eyes and allowed himself to be released into the warm air while the leaves of the trees rustled in the slight evening breeze above. The fire crackled merrily near to them and he shook and twitched as he felt the first gentle brushing of Gabe's touch over his satin, forbidden flesh. His mouth was open, his jaw was slack, with his eyes closed, he was ceaselessly tuned to every motion, every sound, every movement, and every aching and terrible spark against that sensitive organ. He was freed into the night air and he could sense the pricking of Gabe's eyes over him. He waited for a retreat. He waited for that crushing moment that had overtaken him to overtake Gabriel as well— _I can't do it. I'm sorry, Harper. I can't...I thought...I thought I could but I...I'm an Alpha—_

He very nearly screamed, jerking suddenly when he felt a gentle grip over the shaft of him and the hot puff off breath near his tip. His fingers were pressed so hard into Gabe's shoulders, it was certain there would be bruising fingermarks over his flesh. The strangled cry that had been emitted from his body was swallowed into the night along with the beginnings of a reluctant moan. He opened his eyes, his gaze downward and cast over Gabe, bent over with his elbows nearly touching the earth in the firelight, holding him and examining him almost reverently while his wet lower lip hovered only a mere _inch_ from Cole's throbbing sex.

He felt feverish, almost and so hideously desperate for the moist and searching heat. He had never been so aroused in his life. He had never felt this dangerous and frenzied connection to anyone—much less a man. An Alpha. He could hardly control his panting breaths that heaved through his lungs but he sucked in deep to stall them, to hear the rushing of his blood in his ears and feel the thudding urgency in his heart. When Gabe's lips came to him, a groan escaped him, trailing at the end with an airy whine as he grimaced with the delicacy of the kiss. It was maddening. He would go insane. Never in his life had this kind of intimacy existed. Never had he been so perilously focused upon a lover and so dreadfully clinging to every breath and motion. He needed Gabe to touch him. He needed Gabe to bring him to that cusp of climax and then shove him over the precipice to plunge into that waiting abyss.

“Ooooh, _God,_ ” he moaned as he felt himself be taken slowly between the doctor's lips. His teeth were tight together and he had to keep reminding himself not to rock his hips. It was a burden for an artist to be forced and it would help no one for Gabe's teeth to rasp over him. Keeping still was a challenge he was keen to succeed against. Still, he trembled. Still, he keened. Still, he thought of pinning the man down and fucking his throat until he could fill the man's esophagus with spurts of his seed. He was so spiraled into his own pleasure that he almost didn't notice that the hand that was not stroking the part of him that wouldn't fit in the man's mouth was making long, gratifying strokes over the Alpha's own member and it befuddled him.

_He finds this...the taste of me...the feel of me...he finds me arousing. He finds_ this _arousing._ It tickled the back of his mind with an odd guilt that he had taken one glance to Gabe's turgid flesh and been offended by it. _Scared of it._ There was more than guilt. There was a type of shame. He wanted to touch more of the Alpha...if nothing else, to make up for his earlier hesitancy. He let himself pant through more of Gabe's attention, listening to the erotic, wet sounds of that perfect mouth over him, sucking and swallowing and lapping at him until he was closer and closer to the edge, pushing at Gabe even as he wanted to pull and demand that he finish. When he had pushed hard enough to disengage, he met the doctor's confused and worried expression to reassure him before he arranged the man so that he could somewhat straddle him, letting his thick cock bounce and brush against Gabe's and feeling a jolt of sinful pleasure from the mere touch of hot satin upon hot satin.

“Wait...” Gabe requested, his head twisting about until he found his bag, fortunately not far, and he reached for it, the contents clinking about until he could pull out a small jar of something that he took onto his fingers. His hand came about Cole and gently pressed the two of them together, carefully spreading the oily substance over the both of them to alleviate friction while he worked, the undersides of their rigid forms tight together while he stroked and played, sometimes with both hands, the sensation driving Cole wild with the pleasure clinched and coiled at the base of his spine.

“Ah...oh...” he sighed, letting his hips very slightly undulate back and forth, his hands sliding from Gabe's shoulders to his back, his fingers coming around the back of the Alpha's neck, kneading there as if he were an Omega as he brought their bodies closer, pressing against him and pushing his nose against the heat of Gabe's throat to scent him again, forever marking the memory of his arousal into his repertoire of scents.

_Smokey leather, the tang of warm baked apples, hot hearth stones and the nip of autumn's first snow on uncovered ears. Whirls of biting sand whirled in hot dust devils and broken upon the sides of red mesas. The trees and towering mountains of the west and the Rockies as they rise, jutting out from the landscape, young in the history of Earth. Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. Everything masculine. Everything powerful. Everything that was never meant to hold reins but to be run with as a wild mustang._

He couldn't help his husky cries and he rocked his hips harder, seeking that delicious friction between them. Pushing with his body, he moved Gabe to his back and anchored him with hard, demanding kisses that shared breath and body and spirit. He ground downward hard and took Gabe's hand away, pressing himself down enough to trap the two of them together between their bellies while he moved, desperately thrusting with every sharp and breathless keen.

Gabe's arms were around his shoulders, his fingernails clawing at Cole's back while he panted and pulled, trailing those rough touches into Cole's hair and fisting it. “ _Alpha,_ ” he panted, his voice a deep rumble that Cole was unfamiliar with in passion. “Alpha, God. Please don't stop. _Please._ ”

He couldn't even if he had wanted to. He was so close. He was so close to release and he could feel the sparkle of that blinding pleasure welling below the surface of his consciousness. He mouthed at Gabe's throat, sucking and nipping while he rocked incessantly, groaning and sighing with his indescribable pleasure mounting, tightening in the part of him that was still confined by his trousers and feeding a prurient heat just below his heart. It was nothing he did that sent him over the edge. It was the way Gabe's body twitched and convulsed beneath him, a deep and profound shudder racking him as he gave a sharp cry and warmth spurted between them. It was enough. Gabe's deep climax, the smell of his honest bliss as Cole nuzzled his throat: it sent him into those truly coveted spasms of pure sexual delight and he moaned low, letting the sound taper into a postcoital purr that rumbled him towards a gentle calm.

It dawned on him that he was laying fully on top of Gabe, his nose still pressed against the man's bruised and thoroughly well-nibbled neck made red and raw with Cole's stubble. He worried for a moment about his weight and then calmed himself again with his deep purrs, recognizing that if Gabe were a Beta, or an Omega, he might have had reason for concern. He was held by an Alpha, strong and fully capable of handling his body. He felt as though the notion were not so unnerving as before.

He let himself be placid, allowing Gabe's hand to comb through his hair, the tips of his fingers trailing lazily over the back of his neck. Closing his eyes, he tried not to imagine that the creature who had followed them from the desert had been watching them struggle with each other, had been watching them in their delicate moments—in this moment.

Gabe's voice was little more than a murmur. “I've never heard an Alpha purr before...”

It took him nearly all his strength to cease the sound, finding supreme comfort in its continuation. “You've never?”

“No...it's not...it's not _common_ , you know.”

He chuckled. “Neither is this.”

“I'll have to admit, you're right on that count,” Gabe replied with humor. “Though I am thankful you allowed for it...I thought for a moment that you might have been offended enough to...to hurt me.”

“I've hurt you enough,” he said, bringing his head up and moving to get up. Gabe caught him, holding him down with an insistent pressure.

“Please, Alpha. _Harper_. Stay. I...I should be affronted by my own shamelessness but I can't help it. Please don't leave me. Not right now. When I have this.”

He let himself relax back down, secretly content enough to share in Gabe's naked warmth and unbothered by the idea that he was sticky and still edged up against the other Alpha between their bellies. He was comfortable and it was a wonder at all that he was. How could he have known that it would be like this? That he would find this sort of passion in the arms of a fugitive criminal? A murderer? A witch? He had reached an incredible height that had been previously unknowable through the touch and insistence of a man—an _Alpha_ —who had completely disarmed him.

Charisma? Charm? _Witchcraft?_ If it were, Cole decided he didn't much give a damn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went to visit my other grandma. I'll take some time to recover with some videogames. She tried to ask me what my pen name is. Good lord.
> 
> I hope this chapter was sexy, even with Cole's internalized "nope" response. This where the "dubious consent" tag came in, btw.
> 
> Liked the chapter? Make sure to comment so I know! If you don't want to comment, you can always come down to my writing/Omegaverse Tumblr, [J.D. Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/), and ask about characters, writing, headcanons, Omegaverse...whatever. The only thing I don't discuss are spoilers. Thank you very much for reading and I'll see you next chapter.


	14. Chapter 14

The road to Talton was most often desolate with the occasional set of riders or merchant rumbling through, faster than the two men, as they were content to walk. Gabe supposed that it would have been too much trouble for Cole to spend any coin on another horse just for such a short distance. The morning was bright but pleasant under the sparse canopy of trees and Gabe walked on, purposefully keeping his eyes to the ground and trying to keep them there. He'd passed a boundary and he was in no way certain that he would be able to cross it again in the future. Perhaps Harper would come to the conclusion that it must have been some kind of a trick. That he must have been making the attempt to seduce him in order to convince him to set him free. It wouldn't work, even if that were the goal. Harper's moral compass was too rigid and even still, Gabe was almost certain he had already cemented a warm place in Harper's heart.

It was really too bad he was going to die. After all this time, with such a full and vibrant life, he was going to die after he'd finally met the man he could fall in love with. An Alpha. In the east, it would have been impossible for him to think of how in the world they could be together but in the west? It was only too easy, provided no one suspected. But now? After this? He wondered what Harper would feel when he saw him hang. Sadness? Frustration? Anger? The man was adamant that there would be a trial—if he found that there was none... _He would be furious._

It didn't matter. Nothing really mattered. But that was a lie. He wanted to be with this stubborn, handsome, puzzling creature who didn't much like to talk but enjoyed the morbid poetry of Poe. This Alpha whose gritty voice and burning scent drove him to places he'd never thought possible in the arms of another man...such well wrought arms of iron. He wanted to struggle with him, roll around in a bed and growl and nip and grind downward against him until he relented—a challenge met and a challenge won...partially. He liked being flipped over and flipping back, trading power for power with a hungry Alpha lusting after him.

It was about noon. They could have stopped for some kind of lunch but Gabe was feeling a different kind of hunger.

“Harper?” he asked, his voice probably too husky. He was behind, downwind from the other Alpha.

“Yeah? You hungry? I've got some—” He looked over his shoulder and from the sudden recognition in those steely blue eyes, Gabe knew he understood. The Alpha turned his head about, searching for anyone before he wandered off the road, leading Stanford and Gabe into the brush about a half a mile, turning to Gabe with a heavy stare.

Gabe didn't let him ask for details. He dropped to his knees, working Harper's gun belt first before his trousers, seeking that velvet warmth and putting his lips to it as soon as he'd freed it. With his mouth fully over it, he pawed himself through his jeans, overly aroused by Harper's intimate musk and the sweet tang of his arousal through his potent scent. With one hand, he freed himself and rocked into his own touch while he worked the bounty hunter into complete stiffness. He bobbed his head, seeking only to touch it with his lips and tongue, tightening his heat and taking cues from the soft mewling sounds Harper released above him.

It wasn't long before he felt gentle fingers threaded through his hair, softly gripping and pulling as though he were an Omega, perhaps, bestowing a great gift upon his Alpha mate rather than what he really was. He would allow the fantasy. It was better than what Harper could have done—harsh, ripping pulls and forceful fucking. This was a coax of sorts, almost loving if Gabe wanted to imagine it in such a light and God...God, he did.

He forced more of the Alpha down his throat, holding his breath as he blocked his windpipe with it, forcing himself to attempt to swallow around it but finding it nearly impossible. When he backed off a bit, he was able to hum, the sound sending a small shiver through Harper's body. Emphatic as he was, he ignored that strings of his saliva were dripping from his bottom lip to the ground between his knees, swaying as he bobbed his head. When he finally broke off, he didn't allow for even a few seconds before he was rubbing his tongue in small circles over the underside of the tip, where the head met the shaft and just where he knew Harper would be _marvelously_ sensitive.

“ _Oh, God..._ ” Harper whispered, his lower jaw shivering enough to give the sound a delicious shudder. As Gabe looked up at him, he took his plush lower lip between his teeth and sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers just barely tightening into Gabe's hair.

 _That's right, Alpha_ , Gabe thought. _Enjoy this. Enjoy this while it lasts._

He groaned at his own touch on his overheated flesh, taking a moment to spit into his hand to quicken the pace of his strokes before he came back to Harper and enveloped him again, the ache in his jaw disregarded for the pleasure of his lover.

_My lover._

If only it could be so romantic. He sucked and lapped and even at a time, nibbled gently over the Alpha's shaft, eliciting quiet groans and sharp, shaky breaths that aroused him beyond measure and he could feel himself beginning to dip before the rise. He let himself have it, denying himself nothing and humming strongly around Harper's rigid cock as he came, his pearls of seed shooting and then dribbling over his fingers to the dusty ground littered with stray leaves.

“I'm going to... _I'm going to..._ ” Harper made a slight attempt to push at Gabe's head, unwilling to come inside his mouth but the Alpha persisted, more than prepared to swallow the small teaspoon of salty spend that was emptied by that twitching member between his lips. After he released the man from his mouth again, he looked up, his cheeks hot and likely ruddy with his ebbing arousal. Harper was staring down at him, his breaths long and heavy through his nose and his mouth tight across, dipping down at the edges.

Gabe was still holding him as he slowly softened and he murmured, “Please don't regret me.”

Harper took a step back with wobbling legs and tucked himself back into his trousers, refastening his gun belt and grumbling. “Is that what you're fretting about? All you've got to worry about and you think that's what should bother you?”

“Yes,” he replied plainly, putting himself back to rights and wiping his chin on his sleeve.

“Why? Why should it matter to you?”

He followed the man back toward the road, his voice low. “Because...you're all I have as my legacy. Yours is the only memory of me that will live on as a...”

Harper tossed him an arched brow over his shoulder.

“As a...lover.”

“No lovers across the plains? No squaws?”

Gabe's mouth dipped in distaste for the word. “No. None of that. I was much too focused on my studies for fooling around and when I was traveling, the Omegas in the settlements were scarce or taken and those with the tribes were strictly forbidden...or...that is how it seemed. When I was younger...certainly...a foolhardy young boy couldn't be expected not to sniff about the girls and the Omegas and perhaps take one to his bed. But that was years ago...and you're...” _You're different. You're my mate._

Harper frowned and shook his head. “Haven't had a whore?”

“That's absurd,” he quipped as they moved back onto the road. “Of course not. They're quite lovely but I've no taste for a paid companion.”

“Just an Alpha.” He gave Gabe a wry look.

His cheeks heated. “I've no idea where such a predilection came from, I assure you. It's...just you.”

Harper replied flatly, “I'm flattered.”

He frowned at the ground, falling back again and entertaining the thought of pulling one of those rattlesnake heads out of his pack and jamming one into the unappreciative Alpha's neck. He _had_ just sucked his cock in the middle of the afternoon, the least the man could do was thank him.

“If you've got something to say to me Alpha, just come out and say it. You've got about forty-eight hours to air any grievance you have.”

Gabe suddenly realized that the breeze had left them and Harper was clearly able to scent his annoyance. He grumbled under his breath, gripping the strap of his bag and brushing past the bounty hunter to walk in front of him, his head still down while Stanford nickered behind him. At least the horse knew. Harper, however, seemed a lost cause. An Alpha like him wasn't the type to be overcome with gratitude. Especially not when Gabe had been the one to initiate an encounter. He'd become greedy—he wanted more than just Harper's body. He wanted his affection. _True_ affection—caring and warmth. All he had here was the man's resolve to let Gabe do whatever he wished so that he might ease his burdened conscience. It was enough to make him spit, to remove any of that musky, salty, Alpha flavor from his mouth.

Harper let him stew, wordlessly offering him some dried meat as they walked and only speaking to him again when the sun was low in the sky. “Alpha.”

“Hmm?” Gabe asked, the sting of the afternoon faded from his mind and his emotions.

“To your left. Don't look too quickly.”

He didn't, letting his eyes move into the trees, scanning and searching and initially confused as to what Harper had meant. There was nothing there. It took him a long time, perhaps a mile of walking before he saw it in the yellow of the evening sun. A movement. A shift. A shadow, almost, as if his mind were playing tricks on him with the dapples shimmering down through the canopy.

_Yee naaldlooshii._

He swallowed nervously, wondering how in the world Harper had ever been able to spot something that was disguised so well.

_He's a bounty hunter. Hunting is what he does._

What they did from there, Gabe hadn't the foggiest. There was no point in trying to shoot the thing, as it was flitting too fast and acting too ethereal to gauge the distance or even the exact location. Probably fifty feet from them, something of a specter in the trees. Every so often, Gabe would lose sight of it and it would come back a few minutes later, a mere flicker in the corner of his vision.

“It's like it's taunting us...” he murmured, left uneasy by Harper's slow nod. “What will we do?”

“What is there to do? If we can't kill it, we're at the mercy of it. What it wants with us is the real question. Obviously, it's of the mind to kill us but this has gone far beyond the idea that we've trespassed on its sacred land.” He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck with a sigh. “That night...when it came to us and pointed at us with the babe...”

“You think it had something to do with the child?”

“Could it?”

“Certainly but what, I've no idea. Perhaps that we'd denied him Chooli? We brought her back to her people?” Gabe was grasping at straws. “Presumably, the child is his...what could we have done so terribly wrong in allowing it to live?”

Harper grunted. “Perhaps the child was his curse upon her. Perhaps she...”

“Perhaps she offended him and so he cursed her...tangibly...and we broke it, in a way? Or...I did. I broke it.”

Harper shook his head. “It still doesn't make much sense. If it were just you he was angered by, why put the snake heads in my bed?”

_Because he knew it would kill me to lose you._

“I don't know.”

Harper shook his head. “Well, I suppose he's at least going to get a good show.”

Gabe felt his brows twitch downward. “What?”

“We'll likely reach Talton by evening tomorrow. It's your last night with me. If you're looking for something, Alpha, I hope you'll find the courage to ask for it.”

The invitation was clear but he could make no response, sucking in his bottom lip instead and moving to hide behind Stanford as they walked together. The man had given him the most blatant overture and he was at a loss to figure out what in the world he actually _wanted_. No doubt Harper was under the impression that the best he could give was total and complete submission but it wasn't true—that's not what Gabe was after and how to communicate that was nearly beyond him. It would take courage, that was for certain but to burden the man with something like this—something like these intense emotions. It was nearly obscene for an Alpha to bring such things to light to anyone outside their mate.

 _But he_ is _your mate._

He couldn't know that. How could he possibly admit such a thing this man? That he'd become so enamored of him and had recognized his own draw so quickly? In a matter of days? That a man who had never been with an Alpha before in his life had suddenly and conclusively determined that this one—this bounty hunter, was the man he would inevitably love for the rest of his short, miserable existence? Though, he thought wryly, that short, miserable existence was but a number of hours. It couldn't do any harm, could it? To admit such a thing?

_Of course it could. It's akin to the whole town of Talton watching your corpse get off on dying. The embarrassment would follow you into the afterlife. Dignity? Lost. For eternity._

He was being melodramatic and he knew it, grumbling to himself while Stanford gave a short blow and nuzzled against the side of his head for a moment, snuffling at his hair. In reality, this was all just Harper's way of weaseling out of his guilt and that fact alone should have stayed Gabe from confessing that he was certain he could know love in his bounty hunter's arms. The decision now was one that oppressed him even more—to take what Harper thought he should, or to forgo it? Surely to pound deep into Harper's ass would be gratifying but how much so? How much regret could he face knowing that it wasn't something the man would have chosen had he not brutalized Gabe previously?

_Blast it all._

They made camp as the sun began to set, unwilling to let the creature that followed them gain the upper hand under the cover of dark. As they sat around their fire, at least a mile off the road, it was fairly obvious that Harper wasn't going to initiate any contact. Any encounter Gabe wished to have would have to come from his own hand and his thoughts plagued him still. It was mostly one-sided and he had done his share to paint himself as the desperate sex-starved Alpha in the western wilderness. Harper would let him call the shots and if there were no shots called...

After supper, he tore his eyes away from the bounty hunter, the planes of his handsome, stubble-lined face flickering in the dim firelight. He restlessly pulled himself into his bedroll and forced his eyes shut, praying that sleep might come to him quickly so that he might have a chance to ignore his body crying out for his lover's touch—the last chance he might get to know tenderness. His ears and nose were almost too in-tuned to Harper as he sat, keeping watch, the slight tinge of confusion in his scent and the soft shuffling of his movements as he got comfortable. Thankfully, the day's walk had tired him enough to send Morpheus to his bedside and he fell into a deep sleep, the blackness that surrounded him total and lacking in dreams.

When he awoke again, it was still dark, the coolness of the forest driven away through an inexplicable warmth that did not spring from the smoldering coals of the fire. There was a hand on his hip and a body tucked up behind him, the full length of _his Alpha_ pressed protectively to his back. Sudden emotion choked him and brought him fully awake, the scent of it likely the reason Harper stirred.

“Mmmgh,” the hunter murmured. “Gabe?”

His response was only to push backward, exulting when Harper's hand moved from his hip and his arm came around his upper body in a tight hug.

“Hey. S'alright. You're alright.”

He felt hot tears pricking the backs of his eyes and he pressed his face down into the softness of the new bedroll Harper had gotten him. “I can't.”

“You can't what?” Harper asked groggily, still chasing sleep from his mind.

“I can't hold you. I can't be so untrue to myself when I know that you're...you're just trying to absolve yourself of your guilt. All of this is just so you can feel less of a sting about...about what you did to me. And for me, it's...it's so much more than that.” He felt a tear escape him and he cursed it. How could he even take himself seriously when he was leaking like some kind of desperate Omega? It was so terribly hard to spill his own secrets and here he was with this man and it was too easy to talk to him...too easy to tell him everything that was on his mind. He'd never said so many private things to one person and perhaps it was because he was going to die. Perhaps it was because there wasn't much time left and he had to say something, _anything_. It might as well be a secret or two. It might as well be what really mattered.

Harper was quiet for a few moments. “How do I help you, Gabriel?”

“I don't know.” He let out a few racking sobs and covered his face with his hands. “I don't know. I don't know...”

“Shhh...It's alright. You're alright, Alpha. I'm here.”

His voice was filled with tears. “I need to pretend. I need to pretend...”

“What do you need, Alpha?”

“ _I need to pretend you love me._ ”

The hug around him grew tighter and he gave a small mewl when he felt gentle, tickling lips on the back of his neck, Harper mouthing him there, where, perhaps, an Omega's bondmark would go. With slow and tentative movements, Harper continued his delicate assault while his fingers worked to unfasten the row of buttons on Gabe's shirt, sliding his warm hand against his bare chest under the fabric, skittering over his collarbones and brushing over his nipples, purposefully bringing his fingers together to pinch them lightly. Every touch was tender and sweet, every motion that which an Alpha might bestow upon their Omega lover and Gabe felt his breath quicken as his tears dried in trails on his cheeks.

“ _Ahn...Harper..._ ”

“ _Cole,_ ” was the whisper behind him.

He pushed back with his hips, able, even through the bedroll, to feel Cole's stiff arousal. He allowed the Alpha to play with him for half a minute longer before he demanded more, throwing every misgiving he had about the situation into the refuse pile. It wouldn't matter. Surely it wouldn't matter now. He moved on his back and tilted his head to look up at Cole who propped himself onto his elbow and opened Gabe's shirt further until it was falling off his shoulders at which point he lowered his lips to Gabe's chest and kissed him over his heart, letting his mouth linger over the beat.

“Cole...” Gabe muttered, lifting his head to expose his throat and nearly crying out when he felt those loving lips come to it, the cold of the air when the man sucked in a breath through his nose leaving him with gooseflesh. “Please...”

The bounty hunter stripped him methodically, rendering him absolutely nude and still on his back with every instinct inside him pleading for him to get up and regain control. But Gabe didn't, allowing the man to lay him bare before he placed a few more logs on the fire. At his questioning gaze, Cole responded with a shy smile.

“I want to see you.”

Gabe sat up, pulling at his Alpha's clothes until he was also nude, the rebirth of the fire displaying every bit of his muscular strength and when his eyes had drunk it all in, he pulled closer and pressed against him, stealing a short kiss before he found himself ravaged by that possessive Alpha fire. Cole's kisses were a storm like no other, damaging and relentless as they fumbled, flesh upon flesh in the firelight, gripping and gasping and sighing until Cole dipped to nip at Gabe's neck, pushing down until he was grazing his teeth over the thin, delicate flesh of the doctor's inner thigh, pulling moans from his throat until his sudden acceptance of that hot velvet into his mouth caused Gabe to yelp in surprise. He spread his legs open wide, propping himself up with his arms behind him as he reveled in the heat of Cole's mouth, forgetting entirely that he'd been afraid of this.

He let Cole pleasure him, grunting and gasping at each satisfying bob of his head until he could stand it no longer and he pulled at his Alpha, arranging them so that he could lay beside his lover and take him, also, into his mouth and he moaned around Cole's intimidating Alpha shaft as he was again taken and took in return. He sucked and lapped and moaned at the pleasure Cole managed to give him, the tingling shocks twitching at the muscles in his thighs and sending him sparks of pure possessive delirium. This man was his. This _mate_ was his. That he couldn't breed, that he could never rut, it meant nothing. As long as this man could be his—it was all he needed. Struck by a wave of dominant ire, he moved, disengaging himself and shifting to spread Cole's legs, settling one hot thigh on his upper arm and holding it there while he set his mouth, wet and open, over his Alpha's hole.

Cole gasped. “ _Gabriel!_ ” he growled, jerking to pull away but held fast by Gabe's iron strength.

He didn't reply, simply holding him tight while he lapped and sucked, his mind buzzing with the breathy panting his partner couldn't help but emit. He lavished this erotic attention over his lover while the fire crackled merrily, the wind rustled the leaves of the trees, and no doubt the creature that had followed them watched somewhere in the distance...

“Gabe... _Gabe..._ ”

He reached out, pausing only for a moment to grab for his bag and bring out the jar he wanted, his quivering fingers dipping into it before he touched over Cole's entrance, pulling a hiss from the Alpha that marked a tightening. He murmured back, his breath puffing over his mate's backside. “Relax. Relax...”

“I...I can't...”

“Yes, you can. Of course you can.” Without waiting, he pushed against him with one finger, ignoring the hesitant grunt his lover made when the barrier was breached, holding him still while he slowly moved his hand, pushing in and out while Cole shivered and tensed.

“Alpha...” Cole begged.

“I'm going to make you feel good. Do you want that?”

“ _Y-Yes._ ”

At the affirmation, Gabe moved, kneeling and pushing the man to his back, struggling only for a moment before he caught Cole's flailing hands and pinned him down, settling between his legs and dropping to distract him with fiery kisses, taking and driving in and out while he pushed his hips down to create that pulsing awareness. A warning. A threat. A promise.

_I'm going to rut you, Alpha._

He reined himself in, breaking his kisses and taking deep swooping breaths. He couldn't. Not like this. Not tonight. Cole couldn't take him yet. He wouldn't be able to do it without hurting him, not if the man couldn't relax far enough to let him and he'd be damned if he'd go so far as to hurt him. Instead, he pushed away and nipped downward, holding him open and taking him again into his mouth, simultaneously forcing a groan from his body while he reinserted his finger and curled it. Cole's hands grasped at his hair while he writhed and gave deep, soulful groans. Dipping again into his jar, he eased another finger inside and began a steady thrusting rhythm that was clearly taking the Alpha off guard.

As Cole's shuddering gasps and delectable moans reached a fever pitch, Gabe felt his hands leave his head, the Alpha's arms moving up to his face to shield him while his body stretched and his hips twitched. He was so _close_. “G-Gabriel. _Guh-Gabriel!_ ” He came, ropes of jetting spend shining over the ridges of his tensed belly. This time, Cole didn't purr. He dragged the doctor upward between his legs and caged him with his thighs. “ _Do it..._ ” he whispered against the Alpha's lips.

“No. I don't want to hurt you.”

His brows pushed together but he recovered quickly, sitting up and pushing the doctor forcefully with a harsh growl until he was looming over him, snatching up the little jar of oil to dip his own fingers before he took Gabe in his hand and tugged, swiping his thumb over the tip of him to bring forth a hearty sigh.

“ _Cole..._ ” he murmured, letting himself stretch like a cat, rejoicing in the sensation of his lover's hand upon him. His body felt like he was boiling, liquid and roiling in heat. When the hunter kept his hand upon him but loomed to suckle one pink peaked nipple, he moaned wantonly, feeling very much like a pampered Omega. “Don't stop,” he pleaded, the request familiar and coming in a mumbled wave of emotion. He couldn't allow any of this to stop. Not when he was about to foam over, to sizzle in the flames of this delicious heat. His strangled cry was muffled by the back of his own hand as he bit down upon it and stuttered into his climax, the world flashing around him in sparkling fury.

Languid with his release, he was gathered into Cole's embrace and his muddy brain didn't completely wrap around the fact that the man was moving them both into the same bedroll, naked and close, scented with each other in the way only intimacy could achieve. He was warm and comfortable and there were arms around him, his smoke and Cole's fire mingling in his senses while he twisted his body to snuggle closer into his lover's chest.

They awoke together, Gabe's touching and tasting bringing Cole fully into consciousness until they were entangled again, pressed tight against each other in the morning sunlight, rocking and sighing until they were again spent, panting and sated. His groin almost felt sore, as over-stimulated as he had been but he sought to keep his lover for as long as he could have him, nibbling below his ear and scenting him playfully until the Alpha chuckled and pushed him away.

“You are a needy lover,” he murmured, his smile soft and his blue eyes chiding.

Gabe grinned. “That's to be expected, isn't it?” He whispered, teasing, “ _I particularly enjoyed the way you put me between your lips._ ”

“Mmm, now you mock me.”

“No. I would never. I shouldn't like to reduce my chances of having it again...”

“I see.” He pulled Gabe until the doctor was straddling him. “You've a silver tongue, Alpha. Dangerous.”

“Not dangerous enough,” he replied close to Cole's lips before he gave him a soft series of soulful kisses.

“ _No,_ ” Cole whispered into his mouth. “ _I suppose not._ ”

“You'll make me get up...”

“I will. Are you going to give me trouble, Alpha?”

“I should.”

Cole gripped him roughly by the scruff of his neck and pulled him down for another kiss, this one harsh and demanding. “You'd best heed me, Gabriel,” he growled against bruised and swollen lips.

“Yes, sir.”

He hoped it wasn't just wishful thinking when he walked alongside his Alpha, fully dressed again and headed toward Talton. He hoped that somehow he would make it into the marshal's hands and Cole would...would fight for him. He hoped that he'd softened the bounty hunter's heart somehow. He hoped that there really _was_ affection there. He teased as they walked, nervously elbowing the man who seemed more ready to grin and push against him, his grumpy countenance lifting with every periodical flirt.

“Will you testify for me?” Gabe asked, raising his brows.

“I would be one sorry son-of-a-bitch if I didn't. You save an Omega's life, a pup's life... _my_ life. If that isn't enough to show your character before a jury, I'm not sure what is.”

He smiled, warmed despite knowing there would be no trial. Talton likely already had the gallows constructed for his return—hopeful that they would see him die. It was likely that he would swing before sunset and the thought spurred him. He took Cole's sleeve, halting him as he looked down the road in either direction and then kissed him shamelessly. The bounty hunter fed into it, wickedly leading him on into delving tongues and wet explorations until his hands were in his hair and his groin was tight against Cole's thigh. “There won't be a trial,” he breathed. “They're going to rip me from you. I hope your marshal is at the ready to stop them...if he isn't...”

“He will be.”

“I hope so,” Gabe answered and left him, walking on before him, just barely able to see the smoke from Talton's smelters over the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gad. Guys. I've come down with a horrible cold. There are tissues everywhere. I can't even believe I've gotten to this point. Over 5k words and I got it out before the end of Sunday. Oh my gaaaad.
> 
> As always, I encourage you to leave a comment. If you don't want to comment here but you would like to interact with me, my tumblr blog for writing and for Omegaverse is [J.D.Writes](https://jdwrites.tumblr.com/).
> 
> We're about to walk right into the powder keg of Talton so I hope everyone's ready for this shit show. We might only have *looks at watch* Two chapters left if I lay it all down right, which will be a miracle and a half, meaning I might actually get this story done by the end of October. **Incredible.**


	15. Chapter 15

It was a mining community, young and shoddily built. At first, the only people who'd been there were the workers who had set up small tents and basic shanties, digging holes in the ground to shit in. Eventually, things had worked up into a bit of a frenzy about the little place and more permanent structures had risen up out of nowhere, as was what normally happened when someone figured out that the vein they'd tapped was larger than previously thought. Some bigwig back east was making loads of cash on his investment while sitting back in some over-stuffed armchair having never actually seen the damned mine in his life. With all of its foundations and economy in silver, Talton flourished for the time being, over time becoming less lawless and more domesticated. Much like its lumber-producing cousins, it boasted a small community that supported an inn which doubled as a saloon, a set of competing general stores, and a bunkhouse—that was, a _brothel_. Still, with all of the wealth transferred quickly to the pockets of Talton's eastern financial backers, the town couldn't afford a sheriff.

That's why the marshals, tired of tracking down every miscreant and blackguard in the west, set up bounties so men like Cole Harper would track down their prey for them, usually dragging their sorry corpses on the backs of horses over unforgiving landscapes for the government's dime. With women and Omegas scarce in the west, it was a grave crime indeed to murder one of them, leading Gabriel Pruitt's bounty into the thousands.

The marshal that moved over this territory was most often Marshal Embry, a man of moral absolutes who matched with Cole fairly well whenever they managed to cross paths. He moved from town to town regularly to assist in trials, pay bounties, and track down criminals who'd likely fled from settlements further east to hide as laborers or merchants among the willows. The man had probably overseen more hangings in his life than Cole could even imagine and from his disposition, likely had misgivings over every single one. He was a hard man to please and didn't rationalize injustice well. He was known for his steadfastness, his courage, and his _gall_. He was the kind of man Cole hoped would never have reason to hunt him down.

The sight of Stanford was what got them the first bit of attention and Cole noted that with even the first set of eyes upon them, Gabe was keen to shelter himself tight against Stanford's side, keeping close behind Cole as if the two bodies could shield him.

A man he recognized as a Mr. Thurgood approached him, squinting under the wide brim of his hat while he put his hands on his hips. “Mr. Harper,” he said with surprise in his tone. “If you ain't our hero of heroes, but that _can't_ be Gabriel Pruitt.”

“No?” Cole asked, arching a brow.

“He's not dead. More than that, he ain't even tied. Just wanderin' in behind the bounty hunter, like he was a free man.”

“He is a free man,” Cole replied. “He's a free man until he's been tried and convicted of his crime, if he's committed one.”

Thurgood's voice lowered, his edged Alpha tone threatening with anger ripe in his scent. “Oh, he's committed a crime.”

Cole felt a growl loosen from his throat and he drew up, squaring his shoulders even while he knew the rest of the town was pouring out onto their rickety wooden porches and balconies to see what the bounty hunter had brought back for them. Stanford bowed, pawing the loose rock of the road and gave a warning blow which, coupled with Cole's growl, forced Thurgood back a few steps. “Don't you get any ideas, Alpha. I'm lookin' for my bounty and I'll have it before the man steps foot in any courtroom. Now where's the Marshal? Embry!”

A young Beta man had stepped off the porch of the saloon, dressed well and smoking his rolled cigarette, “Marshal's off to Bridgeton, don't know when he'll be back. Likely we'll have to turn him over to the magistrate.”

There was a sudden murmur of agreement that rippled through the crowd that had gathered and Cole could smell the sharp spice of Gabe's fear that lanced through his senses. He recognized that more and more of the townsfolk were stepping off onto the road, approaching from every direction as if to put them into some kind of a stranglehold. Stanford whinnied and flattened his ears, displaying his teeth and pawing at the ground.

“He's my bounty,” Cole warned, his voice sharp. “I'll not let him leave my hold until I've seen the marshal himself and taken what's my due.”

“You'll have to take that up with the magistrate,” Thurgood told him, suddenly flanked by two more Alphas. Large as he was, Cole couldn't fight the three of them and didn't want to—shouldn't have had to. “Now don't be stupid, Alpha, we'll get you your money, we just have a score to settle with this here _doctor_ and it's got nothin' to do with you.”

“Beg to differ,” he growled. “It's got plenty to do with me. This man doesn't step a foot out of my sight until I have my money handed to be from the marshal and no other, is that clear?”

Another voice carried over the murmurings of the crowd and drew Cole's attention.

“Well, well, well! A lovely little spectacle y'all have created out here, especially you, Thurgood. Now don't be _harassing_ the poor man, I'm certain he's had his hands full for the last few!” A tall well-dressed gentleman Alpha stepped down from the edge of a porch and approached with his chin up, arrogant though obviously well-mannered. His mustache was long but carefully tended and matched with his bushy though meticulously trimmed brows. His sharp, icy eyes pinned Gabe, and Cole could hear his lover's breaths turn shallow in his fear. “It's no mean feat to take an Alpha bounty _alive_ as we very well know around these parts. To have him walk behind you, of his own free will, that's another oddity that's marked you as a particularly _efficient_ sort of man. Unfortunately, the last time you were here to sniff about, I had some errands to attend to and was in no way suited to making your acquaintance. I will move to rectify this now.” He put out his hand. “I'm the magistrate of Talton, John Bergund.”

“ _Bergund..._ ” Cole breathed. “Then Elvira was...”

“My daughter.”

_Curse you, Gabriel Pruitt!_ The disaster of walking straight into Talton with Gabe behind him was starting to fall around him, tumbling over in his head and fitting every piece of the puzzle together. It was only too obvious now why Gabe had been so convinced that he would hang nearly as soon as he crossed into the town's limits. _Why hadn't you told me that Elvira was the magistrate's daughter?!_ That singular piece of information was pulsing in his brain while the foghorn warning of imminent danger blared over it all. He stared intently at the hand outstretched to him and swallowed, unsure how he could extract them now. How he could drag Gabe into the saddle with him and ride off without getting shot in the back as soon as he'd done it.

“Mr. Harper?” Bergund asked, drawing his eyes again to the man's face.

“I'm not going to give him to you.”

“You don't have to give him to me, Mr. Harper. The marshal isn't here now.” His frozen eyes flitted to Thurgood. “We're going to _take_ him. You shouldn't worry though, Mr. Harper. You'll get your two-thousand dollars. If you'll follow me to my office, I'll count it right out of the safe. Right now.”

“No. I'll take it from the marshal. When he's here. I'll not waver on this. He's to have a trial. He'll have his day in court!”

“This is tiring, Mr. Harper. My daughter is dead and I am the judge.”

“Not the jury,” he countered.

“Ah. I see your hang-up.” He smiled, the expression heavily tainted by a sickly-sweet arrogance. He turned about to the townsfolk who were now all watching from the street and from the windows. He raised his voice so that all could hear him. “The jury! Have you found Gabriel Pruitt guilty of his crime?! The murder of our precious Elvira?!”

There was an eruption that was unmistakable, a cry of righteous fury and frustration and the lust for a man's blood. _Hang him. Let him swing. Gut him. Tear out his heart._

“Mr. Harper. A logical man such as yourself would recognize that any jury drawn from Dr. Pruitt's peers would find him abhorrent. He _is_ a murderer and there is no one upon a jury that would deny it. To waste our time with such nonsense is illogical when we have already received our answer here. He's guilty, and his sentence is to hang.”

“You'll _wait_ for the marshal!” Cole spat, angling his arm low to the side as if to shield Gabe from them. A resounding baleful chatter came from around them, growing louder until Thurgood and the two other Alphas rushed him. He fought them hard and when one managed to lift him, he kicked out, pushing one of them directly into Stanford who took the man by the neck between his crushing teeth and tossed him as if he weighed no more than a sack of apples. Three or four other men were already on top of Gabe, who made less of a struggle though one of his assailants did feel the brunt of Stanford's punishing kick, sending him sprawling into the dust. The horse screamed and reared, purposefully pounding Thurgood in the shoulder and likely dislocating it, catching the man's cravat in his teeth and tossing him as well while Cole twisted his way out of the last one's hold, breaking the man's jaw with one well-placed hit. Another four or five men were on him and he caught the glint of a steel barrel.

“Stanford!” he cried. “ _Run!_ ”

The horse gave a resentful scream in retaliation, but the stallion did mind him, turning about with a pivot and giving one last kick to the man with the gun before he shot off into a full gallop, tearing through the crowd of spectators and nearly running several of them down while he left.

The magistrate, winded despite not having come into the fray, turned to Cole as he was finally brought to his knees by at least four other Alphas. “My, my! What a display! You truly do have a way about you, Mr. Harper and now it seems I am less surprised to find that you managed to take an Alpha back for his bounty _alive_.”

He hissed through his teeth. “To the devil with you!”

“Before I count out your payment for bringing us our ruthless killer, I'm certain you wouldn't want to miss the _festivities._ ” His smirk was much too smug and he wandered off down the town's main thoroughfare, the crowd being dragged along behind him with their own curiosity while both Cole and Gabe were forced to their feet and pushed forward.

Gabe had told him. The man had _told him_ and he hadn't actually believed that it would happen. That they would tear him away and hang him as soon as he came. If he'd only known that Elvira was the daughter of the magistrate—he would never have come with Gabe at the first. He would have somehow made certain that he could bring the man directly to the law. Not that it would have done much good, but it could have. It could have at the very least bought him some time. He tried to look toward Gabe but couldn't catch his eye.

He couldn't help but feel so overwhelmingly stupid. Somehow, deep in the corner of his heart, he had hoped for a better outcome. He'd built supports for a delusion that could never be. That he might be able to pretend, at least, that the man he'd created this connection with would live on to some ripe old age and hold the memory of him fondly in his heart. What kind of mess had he made of this bounty? What kind of twisted, strange emotions had he recklessly attached with this gentle and compassionate Alpha who was about to be murdered by a mob before his very eyes?

Gabe had been right the whole time. They were ready for him. There was a rickety set of gallows already built next to the jail house and all that was missing from the set was the rope and the man who'd hang. Cole tried to stop walking but was forced forward, his feet dragging until he was able to find his pace again. His reluctance couldn't save Pruitt from swinging and his frantic glances toward the doctor proved again to be fruitless. He wouldn't look at him.

_Gabe..._

He didn't want to remember it like this. He didn't want to see this. When he thought back in his memory to Gabriel Pruitt, he wanted to remember the languorous way his body stretched in yellow, flickered firelight. He wanted to remember the hard beat of his heart when the Alpha released him and took him into his mouth, shocking him with such sinful pleasures in broad daylight. He wanted to remember the surprise he'd felt to know that his cantankerous Paint had taken a liking to him. He didn't want this. He'd never wanted this. Deep in his heart of hearts, he knew exactly what he wanted...he simply hadn't admitted any of it. Not to anyone. Least of all to himself.

_I want him._

The doctor truly had looked at him as though he were the last of something and it stung him to know that he was, and not in the way he wanted to be.

They stopped him short while the Alphas that held Gabe forced him to the set of wooden stairs that led to the platform of the gallows. The cheapjack structure was constructed with a relatively simple trap door mechanism that would allow for a man to be dropped from a fair height with the idea that if the rope were long enough, it could, in theory, snap the man's neck. It nearly never worked properly and men were often left kicking until they'd lost consciousness, hanging for a few hours to ensure that they'd expired before they were cut down and hammered into their coffin. Gabe was staring at the crossbeam, his feet digging in before the first step as his nervousness took hold. There were men affixing his rope to it, tying together his noose with rapid efficiency.

The crowd was yelling, the mob overtaken by their lust for revenge, the scent of their singing rage permeating the air while they chanted and called for his blood to be spilled. It was as if some hideous moon had risen and had transformed them somehow into thirsty wolves, begging for pain, for twisted justice, and they would howl beneath it until they had watched him struggle for breath to the last moment when his soul passed into oblivion.

He hadn't thought he wouldn't have the chance to talk with him again. He hadn't planned for this. He wanted to shout. To somehow get the Alpha's attention and tell him— _tell him what?_

_You don't have to pretend._

A horrible wave of bleakness washed over him as he watched them force his Alpha to take the first step up those hideous stairs while the sun slowly sank toward the western horizon. They couldn't do this—yet no one could stop them. Gabe took another step and then another, driven forward by that relentless pressure and when he reached the platform of the scaffold, the weight of the Alphas holding him made the boards creak and groan. He hesitated before the edge of the trap door but was pushed atop it and bent over while they quickly tied his hands behind him and tied another rope around his arms above his elbows, the tension there preventing enough momentum from his Alpha strength to prevent any kind of speed in escape. He could still break the ropes, but it wasn't likely that he could do so quick enough for it to be effective. The noose was tightened around his neck, the knot, unfortunately at the back of his neck rather than the side—he would strangle.

After he'd been properly placed, his wide, watery gray eyes searched and found Cole, his expression that of fear and something else, something that boiled Cole's blood. _Acceptance._ How could he? How could he relent to this?

_“It's my fault they're dead.”_

Cole shook his head, pleading with him silently that he should not go quietly, that he should not deem this right—ever. Into eternity, he should not forget that he was wrongfully murdered. After all, Cole would never forget. Ever.

“Do you have something you wish to say, Dr. Pruitt?” the magistrate asked, strolling onto the scaffolding with the man Cole thought must have been the executioner, as he was carrying the black sack that would be slung over Gabe's head.

Gabe's eyes met Cole's again before he swallowed. “I didn't...I didn't kill your daughter.”

_That's right. Tell them. Tell them!_

The crowd booed and cussed.

The magistrate seemed only amused. “No? Then why did you run, Alpha? No. Don't bother answering. Do you have a prayer you want to recite before we send you to your maker?”

“No...not a prayer. A poem.”

“Fine then,” Bergund said with a wave of his hand.

 

_Take this kiss upon the brow!_

_And, in parting from you now,_

_Thus much let me avow —_

_You are not wrong, who deem_

_That my days have been a dream;_

_Yet if hope has flown away_

_In a night, or in a day,_

_In a vision, or in none,_

_Is it therefore the less_ _gone_ _?_

_All_ _that we see or seem_

_Is but a dream within a dream._

 

Cole growled, unable any longer to watch this farce continue when he heard a loud and ripping scream. A blur of white and black and the fury of thousands all in the heaving girth of his constant companion. Stanford tore through the break in two buildings and leaped with ferocious strength, landing heavily upon the scaffolding and sending dust puffing down from the boards while they groaned and cracked under his weight. He cried out again, his teeth bared while he reared and Cole took advantage of the general bewilderment, elbowing his captors and fighting his way to the steps, intent to remove both his horse and his lover from the perilous gallows.

Bergund ran from the angered horse and Gabe fought to preserve his footing while the scaffolding shook under the thundering hoof beats. Cole ran at full tilt, shoving through the crowd to reach the shuddering stairs while Stanford shook his head and let out long, terrifying screams, shielding Gabe from the shrieking crowd with his body and stomping hard to threaten the man with the hood in his hands. He was halfway up the stairs before Stanford turned, pivoting on his front legs and kicking out with all his fury. Cole saw all of this as he reached the top of the platform, watching the man who would have pulled the lever to send Gabe to his maker kicked in the chest by the enraged Paint, his flailing body knocking against that very lever. Gabe's eyes went wide and he gave a frightful little shout while the door gave beneath him.

Everything in that moment seemed almost to slow, as if time itself was nothing. Cole jumped, spreading his legs uncomfortably wide as the heel of his boot caught on the near edge of the hole and the arch of the sole of the other caught the other side. He'd managed to catch Gabe about the waist, holding his full weight while somehow— _somehow—_ maintaining his balance while comically split over the gaping trap. Before he could even consider the vulnerability of their precarious situation, three loud pops stunned the whole of the roused crowd and at the first, Cole was convinced someone had just shot them.

Those fears were put to an immediate rest when he heard the familiar shout of Marshal Embry as his horse came to a trotting stop at the edge of the gathering.

_“What in the Sam Hill have I rode into?! Have y'all gone plumb crazy?!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHAHAAH. WHAT IN THE SAM HILL INDEED. Every time I think of Cole doing this, I think of that vine where the kid puts his foot on the ottoman and it slides forward and he screams in abject terror. I have laughed so many times when rereading this.
> 
> **STANFORD. BAD ASS. BIG HERO.**


	16. Chapter 16

Gabe thought he might have still been trembling an hour after. The marshal had fired off his pistol another three times and told every one of the townsfolk to go back to their homes before he broke out his other sidearm and made them live to regret their decision to stay. Few had taken him up on the threat and those that did were convinced to leave by a few well-placed puffs of dirt kicked up by Embry's bullets near enough to their toes that they scrambled to get away. It was through the grace of some divine alone that Cole had been able to keep his balance how he was before the marshal was able to come loosen the noose from about his neck and assist in getting his feet back upon solid ground. His legs had felt like they were sacks filled with lard and he'd had a difficult time letting go of the shoulder of Cole's shirt, gripping him for stability as well as for comfort. He had felt the man's pressing need to provide something for him. It was in his scent—his apology.

Now, he was sitting beside the marshal's desk, a strong cup of coffee in his hands, the black liquid betraying the tremors in his hands with every reflection it gave upon its surface.

“Alright,” Embry blinked, sitting down and wiping over his face with one hand, his own coffee in the other. “Now tell me _what_ is going on, doctor? What in the blue blazes would make you walk back to Talton without givin' this Alpha a run for his goddamn money? You are not a popular man and there ain't no reason that both o' the two o' you should be alive right now.”

Gabe sighed, flashing his eyes to Cole for a second and taking in his passive and apologetic stance as he leaned against the wall. “I couldn't hurt him. I'm not that kind of Alpha.”

“You sure as hell were that kind of Alpha the night you caught Ned Powell in your fiancee's room.”

“I swear to you, Marshal, it didn't happen like that. I...I didn't know what happened. I saw their bodies and I just...I ran because I knew that everyone would think that—that I did it. My only hope was to run. It was the only obvious choice. I had no blood on my hands, Marshal. None. I swear to you.”

“And you didn't see who'd done it.”

“No, I...”

“And you were in your fiancee's room for what reason? A meeting with her? Were you intimate with her?”

Cole cleared his throat, coughing once and averting his eyes as if he were offended at the suggestion of Gabe's intimacy with another. The thought put a bit of pink in his cheeks.

“No. Nothing like that. In fact, I'm not sure why I was there. I have to admit, Marshal, I'd just come back from a celebration with the nearby tribe and I was in no condition to attack anyone. I swear. If I was in her room, it was to ask her for help.”

“For help?” Embry's sharp brown eyes searched him.

“Yes. You see, I thought _demons_ were after me. I suppose I wasn't much wrong, was I?”

Embry's face gained a passive, understanding expression and he nodded slightly. “No. I suppose you weren't. I don't know if I believe much of what's come outta your mouth but I've no reason _not_ to. You've always been a good man, Dr. Pruitt. But an Omega who's been cheatin'...now that's something I know can boil a man's blood.”

Gabe sighed and took a sip of his coffee, setting it down and putting his elbow beside it, covering his eyes with his hand and leaning into it. “I knew she she was seeing him. I knew she had a lover. I didn't know it was Ned. It seems like I'm the only idiot in town who didn't know it was Ned... I tried to keep it from her that I knew. If I hadn't known, she could save face and choose whatever she felt was best. I knew she wouldn't go against her father, so I just didn't say anything at all.”

“Seeing them together. You must have snapped.”

“No. At least...I don't think so...”

Cole took a step off from the wall, his gritty, raspy voice startling Gabe enough that he jumped a little and took his elbow off the table. “Gabe didn't kill Elvira.”

Embry studied him. “You know this, Harper?”

“Look at him. You and I have seen more guilty men in our lives than innocent ones. The fact that he walked all the way back here—it means he had to have some glimmer of hope that the truth would come out. That maybe he had some witness who'd seen him and would know that he wasn't lying. Why would a man who'd done such a thing come back here without a fight? And let it be known, Embry, _he gave me no fight._ ”

A fight was the last thing he gave him, Gabe thought, his cheeks again flushing.

“In fact, when I found him, he was assisting a woman in birth. He'd sacrificed his lead on me to help her bring a pup into the world and if he hadn't, she and the pup weren't long for this world. Now tell me, Marshal, does that sound like the actions of a man who's ruthless? Who wants nothing more than to save his own hide? Maybe he killed Ned Powell...but the way I see it, and from what Elvira's friends told me, it's more likely that it was Powell who killed her.” Cole leaned on the desk and Gabe could smell his fire, comforted and vindicated to have that pure Alpha strength fighting for him the way he'd hoped he would.

Embry studied Cole's face and then looked to Gabe who met his eyes, uncertain. “I see what you're suggestin'. You think Miss Bergund told Ned that she was choosing to marry the doctor here and he couldn't let her. He thought if he couldn't have her, neither could Dr. Pruitt...it's a ghastly thing to do to a lover, Harper, though a desperate Alpha might decide to do it.” He stroked his stubble-coated chin and leaned back in his chair. “And you think the doctor killed Ned after seeing what he done to Miss Bergund.”

Harper nodded once, his slashing brow arched as if to persuade.

“I see what you mean. Though it's difficult since the doctor can't rightly remember exactly what happened. Though, if he was put into a feral rage, he _wouldn't_ rightly remember what happened. Least, that's how I expect it happens. I've never had it happen to me.”

“I have,” Cole stated darkly, his eyes half-lidded with the unpleasant memory. “Didn't have a thought in my mind 'til I came back to myself to find I'd done something awful. I hadn't meant it but that doesn't mean I didn't do it...but if that's what happened to Pruitt, he still don't deserve a hangin'. Powell could have been hunted down and shot days later or Elvira could have been avenged right then and there.”

Embry nodded. “Yeah and you're tryin' to ask me what's the difference.”

“That's exactly what I'm trying to ask you.”

“Well, nothin'. But there's a town out here who're itchin' for that hangin' and a judge who's not goin' to let this one go. If the doctor can't remember what happened, we have to have a trial and you know how that's going to turn out. You saw it today.”

Gabe took another sip of his coffee, morose to find his hand trembling harder at the thought of standing upon that scaffold again. When he put down his mug, he put a hand through his hair. “There are two options here, Marshal.”

“How's that?”

“Either you send me to trial knowing full-well I'll hang, or you cancel my bounty and I never show my face in Talton ever again. In fact, I'll ride my ass all the way down to California if it'll help me.” There was desperation ringing in his voice and he despised it, knowing it pooled in his pleading tone like some acrid putrescence. “There are demons already who've got my name, Marshal, I don't have a mind to meet them before I have to.”

“Even if I cancel your bounty, word doesn't spread fast in the west. You could find a bullet in your back before you know it.” At least Embry seemed to be considering the merits of the idea. He was a reasonable man. “The magistrate will try to have my head for it but as a U.S. Marshal, I've got seniority on these matters, seeing as Talton doesn't have a town marshal.” He leaned further back and put his feet up on the desk. “They might try to run me out, regardless. As I said, you are not a popular man.”

“He'll go in secret. Before they can catch wind. If you don't deputize a posse and you cancel his bounty, their vigilante justice against him will constitute murder,” Cole explained. “I'll take him myself. We'll get a fast horse and I'll keep him safe as he goes.”

“Now, now, let's back up here,” the Marshal frowned, beginning to roll up a smoke, “This is all well and good if the doctor didn't actually murder Elvira. But so far, I ain't got no proof o' this.”

“Your proof should prove his guilt, not his innocence. Is there anyone who can say he is guilty beyond all reason otherwise?”

“Admittedly, no.”

“Then I say we keep him in the jail house, away from the mob. Send out letters canceling his bounty and leave before sunrise.”

Gabe's heart was pounding with the thought of finally being free. Finally running and having that horrible weight lifted from him. Even if he were chased to the ends of the earth by _yee naaldlooshii_ , he would at least, finally, have what he really wanted. He let his gaze flicker over the angle of Cole's strong jaw, the breadth of his wide shoulders, the sheen of sweat over his brow from the heat of the jailhouse...he could finally hold him again. It had only been morning since the last time he'd touched Cole's naked flesh and it felt as if he'd somehow lived a lifetime since. Though, if he were no longer the man's quarry and there were no longer a bounty upon him...what would keep him to Gabe's side? It had only been pity that had put Cole beneath him, hadn't it been?

“You are a strange man, Harper,” Embry said, licking together his smoke and putting it between his lips. “You come here with an Alpha, _alive_ , for a bounty you're now telling me to cancel. If he won't go to trial, you won't get your bounty.”

“A man's life is worth more to me than money.”

Embry shook his head in apparent disbelief. “Like I said...you are a strange man, Harper. An even stranger bounty hunter.”

“I've heard it before,” he dismissed, getting up and wandering off to the small window cut out of the side of the wooden building. “Whatever you want to do with him, I'll stay in here. If they mean to kick down this door, I'll be at the ready.”

Embry glanced at Gabe. “What do you think, doctor? Do you think you're innocent?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Hmm. I think I see what Harper means. I've seen a lot of guilty men in my time and a few innocent ones. I'm not sure I want to burden my conscience with your death...and that's what it would do, no doubt. Harper's going to buy a horse, a good fast one. He's going to get it ready with a saddle and bags, pack it up like he's going on a long trip so it looks like it'll just be his pack horse. I'll cancel your bounty and tonight, you'll both get out of this town and head off. Indian territory east or California west, I've no preference but _gone._ ”

Gabe let out a patent sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“Thank _someone_ ,” Embry mumbled while he lit his smoke.

* * *

Gabe was shut into the cell in the basement, the heavy wrought iron designed to keep an Alpha at bay was unlocked to make for a clean get away but the appearance was necessary just in case. Alone again with Cole in the cool subterranean room, he sat on the floor against the earthen wall and peered out through the bars at the man who'd gone and saved him, gotten everything prepared, who'd _fought_ for him.

“Mighty kind of you, Alpha,” Gabe said in a low tone. “You know...you didn't have to do all that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have gotten shot. You could have gotten yourself hanged right after me...”

Cole shrugged, turning to face Gabe and sitting on the floor outside the bars. It was nearly impossible to know what time it was as the basement had no windows, only a few lit candles mounted to the walls and one oil lamp on a stand near the stairs. The light was yellow and soft and it made Cole's husky voice spark Gabe with a heady arousal. “I'd no care for all that. They were going to murder you. I couldn't let that happen.”

He felt overly aware of Cole's body and especially his hand which he leaned on while he sat close to the wall. He stared at it. “You don't have to stay with me...after. You don't have to protect me. If there are still hunters out for me, you'll be in danger.”

“I need to make sure you're safe,” Cole told him with serious eyes.

“You don't have to force yourself.” Shame uncoiled from his belly and twisted its snaking tendrils into his guts. “You've more than repaid your debt to me. You never even had a debt to begin with...I told you, it wasn't your fault and you've no need to punish yourself like this. I've got d-deviant desires and you've got no reason to martyr yourself to them, I—” He was stopped cold by the warmth of Cole's hand as it reached his through the bars. His gaze snapped up to find the Alpha close, his steel blue eyes intense as he stared hard at him.

“I'm no martyr, Gabriel.” His voice was husky, his scent laden with something Gabe couldn't comprehend. “You don't have to pretend anymore.”

He searched the Alpha's eyes and expression, looking for a seed of doubt. He found none and even despite that, he had to ask. “You aren't serious. You can't be.”

“Why can't I?”

“You've only been _humoring_ me, haven't you? A kind, pitying soul for a man set to swing from the gallows...isn't that what this has been? Aside from your repayment of sins, hasn't that been your motive?”

A flicker of something passed into Cole's eyes and his scent altered toward a hint of uncertainty. “Is that what you'd rather?”

“No, God no. But I'd never dared dream that...” Cole looked at him, something in his expression begging Gabe not to speak any longer. He swallowed his next words and reached through the bars, grasping a hold on Cole's shirt, dragging him until he could kiss him between. Catharsis lay in that kiss, beautiful and fevered. In it was every anxiety he'd had, laid bare. He should, by all rights, be dead right now but he was very much alive and it was only because of this man. This Alpha. His own Alpha who had thrown himself into the mire of Gabe's life and held him up when he was to dangle from the rope of western justice. Justice? He could have spat. Instead, he thrust his tongue beyond Cole's barriers and let himself rage against his near death and those who meant him harm. Cole's hands came to his shoulders through the bars and held him tight, daring him not to break away, Challenging him in the way only another Alpha could.

He gripped Cole by the nape, holding him and kneading him there until he was rewarded by a passive little Alpha grunt, followed by the man whispering into his mouth. “ _If Embry finds us, he'll have us hanged for this alone._ ”

“That might be,” he conceded, sitting back and knowing he must have looked just as lustful as Cole did, his face ruddy and flushed, his pupils wide and black in the dim light. “We'll have to ride fast. Hard. That thing is still out to get us and it'll have the upper hand if we're on the move through the forest.”

“If it gets close enough to touch you, I'll put a bullet in it and hope that does something.”

He sighed. “If only I could be free. Really, truly free. I would ride with you, Cole. I'd hunt bounties with you.”

Cole smiled. “You wouldn't.”

“I would. I think we'd make a fine team of it.”

“Alright. If you think you can handle a rugged life.”

Gabe scoffed and pushed him through the bars on his shoulder. “Did a fine job of it running from you, didn't I?”

“That you did. Coddled as you are.”

He pretended to be affronted, huffing comically as Cole snuffed a laugh. “How dare you. I've never been so terribly offended. What kind of heathen—” His words were cut off as a deep tremor rumbled around them, a gentle shiff of dust and dirt falling from the cracks in the ceiling boards. His heart plummeted into his bowels while he stared, wide-eyed at Cole. “Whuh-what was that?”

“Felt like an explosion...does Talton have an armory? Any place they might keep black powder?”

“They keep all sorts of explosives, the mine—” There was another, larger tremor and this time an audible blast and the both of them leaped to their feet. “It's got to be some kind of accident. They'll need a doctor!”

There was a multitude of shouts, yelling from above them as feet clamored over the boards. Cole flung the iron door open and grabbed at Gabe's forearm. “They'll kill you if they find you, wounded or not. This could all be a way to get you out where they can get to you.” He drew his gun with his other hand and pulled Gabe behind him while leading him to the stairs. When they came to the door, Cole opened it only a crack with Gabe behind him, straining to see through it as well over his shoulder. There was another explosion somewhere else, somewhere closer. Cole whispered back to him. “There's fire in the streets.”

“We've got to go. We've got to help!”

“You've got no obligation to these people, Gabe.”

“I have _every_ obligation to help _anyone_ who needs it!” When Cole's steely glare fixed itself upon him, he stared back with equal intensity, unable to waver from him this commitment he'd made. He was a doctor, by God, and he was _going to be a doctor until he died._

“Fine. But if you die, I'm putting a bullet through your corpse's heart for good measure.”

“Alright,” he replied, nearly smirking at the gesture—morbid as it was.

It was well enough that they left the jailhouse then as the dry wooden structure had caught alight from the floating embers of the nearby general store. It seemed that almost half the town was on fire, residents running this way and that, finding their sand buckets nearly ineffective against the rapidly-spreading flames. Thick, dark smoke clouded the main street while screams hazed his mind and garbled together in the night. It was difficult to see what had been destroyed and even more difficult to assess any of the damage, or better yet, where they should have gone. They staggered through the smoke, bumbling across random, panicked townsfolk while smaller explosions peppered the landscape. Talton was burning to the ground.

“ _This is your fault!_ ” he heard an Alpha roar. John Bergund. He couldn't pinpoint the direction and his heart fluttered into his throat, his hand instinctively shooting out to find Cole's sleeve. He whirled his head this way and that, searching in vain. “ _This all your fault! Gabriel Pruitt!_ ” He had never before heard his name uttered with such venom and he moved to shove Cole behind him while the other man fought him to remain by his side. A shot rang out and a puff of dirt splashed over Gabe's boots and trousers, causing him to jump with a small gasp.

Cole fired once into the billowing, roiling smoke but there was no cry of pain.

_Missed._

With a pistol held in front of him, John Bergund was suddenly visible through a break in the smoke, the orange, pulsing light from the fires around them illuminating his twisted and ugly visage. Beyond him, the scaffold Gabe had once been condemned to die upon was aflame as if a pyre.

“ _Your fault! You've brought the devil to Talton, Pruitt! You're a witch! I've known it since you took the heart out of my little girl!_ ”

He felt a choking terror creep up from his belly while Cole trained his pistol directly on the approaching Alpha. _The devil to Talton? No. I've brought yee naaldlooshii..._

“No further, Alpha!” Cole yelled, his voice edged hard. “I'll drill you where you stand should you take one more step!”

Bergund's eyes danced with madness in the firelight and surely Cole was only a second away from pulling the trigger again to end it but he needn't have bothered. A terrifying, splitting scream tore through the night—a sound no human could conjure and one that Gabe and Cole knew only so well. It was enough to turn a man gray, the shrill shriek of the _skinwalker_. It came as a blackened, soundless cloud and swooped through the turbid soot with heavy wings and it smashed down with all its force and fervor on John Bergund, engulfing him in that grotesque cloak of fur, and feather, and flesh and at once there was a terrible scream and _that_ was human—so terribly human that Gabe found himself flung against his mate, holding him to both protect and seek comfort as Bergund's cry was strangled and severed, the sound of shredding meat and crunching bone filling his ears.

There was a gunshot close to him and he knew that Cole had shot the beast and the dark, bleak knowledge in his heart told him that it had done nothing. The beast stopped its wicked tearing at Bergund's fresh corpse and turned, its formless face dripping with blood and its hideous maw gaping open with red-stained teeth. It drew up, its wings huge and black and its talons open and ready to slash and kill.

“No!” Cole screamed, wrestling with Gabe to protect him, offering his back to the beast, his body fraught with tension and the expectation of pain.

_Yee naaldlooshii_ did not strike. Gabe wriggled to peer at it around his lover to find it slowly drawing up, closing its strange mouth and slowly folding its huge, blackened wings, the ghastly folds of flesh or cloth that melted from its form pulling in and the bizarre, formlessness of its face growing more familiar...more human. It never did quite make it, still appearing as at once both man and animal as it stood, barely alight by the flames and swirled about in smoke. Sudden understanding dawned over him and he struggled to break away from Cole's steel grip.

“ _It was the babe!_ ” Gabe cried. “It was the boy! I...I helped you. _I understand now!_ ” He fumbled over his words, “P-Please! Don't hurt him! He means me no harm! Please!”

The huge black void eyes ringed with gold gave a slow blink, studying the two of them as Gabe fought to put Cole behind him.

“He means to protect me!” Gabe pleaded. “He's...he's my...” He cast an uncertain glance to Cole's wide, questioning eyes, shining as the flames licked around them. “ _He's my mate._ ”

_Yee naaldlooshii_ did not question this sentiment. Instead, it stepped forward, its looming height made more intimidating by the sudden growth upon its head of great horns...no... _antlers_ , rising up as if to pierce the sky. Its horrible talons stretched, reaching out to touch him and Gabe fought the urge to shy away, letting the creature place its ghoulish hand upon his forehead as it whispered in some demonic voice and, the very next moment vanished as if it had never been, the musky scent of its fur and feathers the only thing left to tell Gabe that it was ever there.

“ _Devil take me..._ ” Cole rasped in disbelief.

“Surely he will me,” Gabe replied, staring in horror at the mutilated corpse of John Bergund—whatever was left of him, that was. Long shreds of his flesh had been torn from his body, as if stripped by some carrion bird. Blood still oozed from the man's open wounds and though bits and pieces of him were torn and gaping, somehow Gabe still imagined that there was some way he could have risen or moved of his own volition. Life was just about that strange, wasn't it?

“What is this?” Cole asked, moving before Gabe and placing searching fingers against his collarbone, lifting something that he had to awkwardly look down upon. “It's given you a...gift?”

It was a plain leather cord and at the center was strung a few simple beads and a short, black raven feather. How the creature had managed to place it around his neck, he would never discern, surely, but there it was and he was very much disgruntled by it. He made a short sound and moved to tear it off but Cole caught his hand.

“Leave it. It's a blessing.” He put his warm palm over it, the heat of him seeping deep into Gabe's heart.

A separate voice rang out beyond them. Embry. “ _Are you two idiots still here?! What the fuck was that thing!?_ ” He coughed, staggering out from the smoke. “This place is a goddamned tinder box and it's lit up about us! Did you see that _thing!?_ ”

They turned to him together and Gabe nodded. “We did, right before it tore the magistrate to pieces.” He glanced at Cole with a wary look. “It think it's high time we got the hell out of this hole. Imagine it's probably safer in Bridgeton for you, Marshal.”

“I reckon!” he spat, angrily. “You two oughta skedaddle then, quick, afore any o' these scared as piss folk got yeh cornered. Fuck! That thing was _huge!_ ”

With the marshal's blessing, they ran toward the outcrop where the horses had been left and found Stanford keeping the mare Cole had purchased relatively calm. With everything already in order for a quick flight, they slung themselves into the saddles and kicked the horses into a hearty canter. Outside of Talton, outside of the billowing smoke, the air was clear and warm and they stuck to the road heading west. They moved swiftly through the dark and no longer worried about what might have been following them. Whatever it was, if it was there, it was a man.

Gabe could handle a man. A man was malleable. He gave a small glance over to his lover, bathed in moonlight as he rode, calm but alert atop the Paint that had surely saved his life. Yes. Gabe could handle a man. That much was certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the time of year where everything starts happening at one time. Deep breaths. Drink some coffee. Plot out your NaNoWriMo...You win some, you lose some.
> 
> Turns out the thing was trying to protect Gabe _from Cole_ this whole time? Oh man. These two have the strangest "how did you two meet" story of all time. 
> 
> Anyway. Next chapter is the last and then we're hard into NaNoWriMo. These boys are going to have safe, sane, and consensual love-time. If you like the story, comment! _Comments make the world go 'round._ If you hate it, you may ~~eat shit~~ also comment! You can also come to visit my Tumblr page, J.D. Writes, for Omegaverse headcanon's, drabbles, and the like. I answer all asks as long as you're polite!


	17. Chapter 17

The morning sky was a brilliant number of colors and hues, blazing with a bright fire of reds and oranges and yellows which faded into the rest of the sky's hazy grayish mood. Cole was tired. They'd ridden hard even with heavy packs and now, just about to the edge of the desert, still shaded by trees, they slid from their horses a few miles off the road. He felt like his legs were made out of the strange pudding his aunt used to make around Christmas time and his brain was weary. He'd been awake much too long and if he were to stay up, he wouldn't have enough energy to keep them both safe. The marshal had gone back to Bridgeton and they'd rode off into the wilderness—California their first goal. If they never made it, it was likely because they'd picked up a bounty somewhere. He'd already decided that hunting bounties with his lover sounded like the best way to go about having an affair with an Alpha. If it came to killing, he was certain he would be the one to pull the trigger. That didn't bother him. As long as Gabe was near to him. That's all he cared for.

That was all he cared for now, anyhow. The morning was going to get hot but he didn't care, setting up his tarp against a tree so that it shielded them from most of the light and placing their two bedrolls together before he stripped down to his under-things and pulled Gabe down with him, divesting him of most of his clothes and gathering the man into his arms so that he might sleep soundly, knowing the Alpha was safe.

His dreams were for the most part pleasant and only the last was fraught with tension. The hazy quality of it should have given it away, no doubt. He could hear Stanford screaming, the warbling nature of noise in his dreams unsettling and casting a heavy stone into his heart. Gabe was upon the scaffolding again.

_Stop this nonsense._

He pulled himself out of the unpleasantness with a sharp breath in and tightened his hold around his lover's naked shoulders, adoring the way Gabe readjusted himself against his body, sliding a heavy thigh over Cole's hip to stretch and be comfortable. They snoozed for just about the rest of the day, waking to their bellies grumbling for food. He slid a warm palm over Gabe's bare stomach.

“Hungry?” he asked.

Gabe brought his forehead to Cole's and pressed softly. “Is that an offer?”

He grinned and pushed forward, letting Gabe take him into a delicate set of intimate kisses that sent thrilling flares of excitement through his body. The last vestige of sleep left him when he rolled over and opened his legs to take Gabe between them, straddling him and pressing down with his hips until he heard the man moan openly into his mouth. “I will offer myself to you whenever you wish,” he claimed. “Though I feel it's only right to feed you actual sustenance...I can hardly keep you going on wishes and kisses alone.”

“If only you could,” Gabe sighed, holding the back of his head to kiss him again, his fingers curling and gripping the hair at the back of his head to keep him just where he was. “I would drain you of all you could offer me and I should hope you would enjoy it as much as I.”

“To my death,” Cole replied, feeling his heartbeat quicken in his chest.

Gabe paused, his lips still against Cole's when he whispered, “ _I hadn't known you felt that way..._ ”

“I'm a stubborn Alpha. How could you have known? How could _I_ , for that matter? I have lied to myself in thinking I couldn't possibly feel this way about you...”

“When did you know?”

He chuckled and dropped his head to the crook of Gabe's neck, pulling in his scent as if he were dying for that special _something._ “Embarrassingly enough, it was when you were standing on the cusp of your death. The idea that I couldn't have you anymore...that they should take something that...that _belonged to me._ You are mine, Alpha. I couldn't let them take you. They'd no right to you. Same as they should have no right to me. I'm yours.”

He felt Gabe's teeth graze his neck and he shivered, gooseflesh breaking out over every inch of his skin. The rasp of his lover's murmur put a flutter of errant butterflies through his belly. “Should I mark you, Alpha? So that everyone should know you are mine? Perhaps not _everyone._ Perhaps a mark where only I should see it. Not to hide it...but to savor it...perhaps...upon your thigh.”

He growled and gently set his teeth to the bulk of muscle between Gabe's neck and shoulder, grinding down and reveling in the rub of his hardness against his Alpha's.

“Oh...” Gabe groaned. “Oh...Cole...”

Between them, Cole's stomach growled loudly, breaking their intimate moment with the rude sound.

“Oh dear,” Gabe laughed while Cole sat up, placing a hand over the offending part of him. “You're right...we can't likely roll around while we're starving to death...and let me make one thing very clear, Mr. Harper.” He lifted a brow. “I will be rolling you around.”

He smiled even as he eased his way off his lover and slid his boots on, bothering not with his trousers or any of his other clothes. They were far off the road and not near to any path. There was no reason to think that someone should come across them. He pulled out a few bits of dried meat and some bread he'd stuffed in with it, carrying what he could to the tarp. They sat and ate together while the desert dogs barked in the distance and the birds that squawked and crowed from their nests in the trees chattered on above them. Somewhere over the desert, a dry storm kicked up red dust and darkened the distant sky, thunder rolling out over the dusty landscape with its far flung echo.

He took the time to study his companion, finally seeing him nearly nude in the daylight. He was a strong Alpha, his muscles defined and his body well-formed. He was a doctor, after all. His diet likely had been nearly perfect for being out in the unforgiving west and he could only have been so diligent with himself. He was beautiful...more _handsome_ , Cole thought. That he could feel this way, be so attracted by such a creature... It baffled him even still. His scent, of course, was less burning than most Alphas and he came to know it with every fiber of himself. He'd never forgotten a scent before in his life but this one was the first Alpha that he would treasure.

_Smoke. A fire in the wilderness. Tamed though no less biting. The leather of an old saddle and the gentle ache of his back when he'd slid from it after a long day's ride. The rasp of Stanford's mane over his knuckles when he fit his reins, and the hard warmth of horseflesh under his fingers. The thunder of hooves—the pounding of a stallion's heart. Willful. Tamed. Half-feral despite._

It was enough. He finished his meal and as soon as Gabe was finished with his, he pounced, drawing the man's throat to his nose to take long lungfuls of that forbidden scent. He didn't even mind that as soon as he had Gabe upon his back, he was pushed nearly savagely, rolled upon his own back with his lover between his legs, pushing against his most sensitive of places. He moaned, the sound so pleading that it was nearly unfamiliar to his own ears. He had never heard himself sound... _wanton_. It must have sparked something in Gabe as well because the Alpha was mouthing at him, nipping his throat and collarbones and finally clamping a rough bite into the meat of his chest.

“Ah!” he barked, drawing Gabe's heavy-lidded though humored glance before the Alpha drew down again and this time was kind, taking Cole's nipple gently between his lips to suckle him. “Mmm,” he groaned as he relaxed, easing his head down and tilting up his chin to present his throat while his Alpha laved lovingly over his chest.

“I'm going to have you, Alpha,” Gabe promised, his voice raspy and certain. “I'm going to make you scream like you've never screamed before. You're going to beg for me while I'm inside you.”

Cole let loose a small, desperate sound. “Don't speak of it. Just do it,” he grunted.

The doctor produced his jar of slippery lubrication and quickly divested the both of them of their underthings before he dipped his fingers and pressed the pads of them against the center of him, completely ignoring his throbbing manhood where it lay upon his flat stomach. The mewls he was conjuring were bizarre and yet he couldn't help them, their production a direct result of his body's rejection of his position. He wanted, more than anything, to sit up, to push down his lover and keep the man from remaining between his legs. He gasped noisily when a finger was slipped inside him and his hand shot out, gripping Gabe's shoulder hard enough that he would bruise him.

“Calm, Alpha,” Gabe ordered him though it did nothing to keep his fingers from clenching harder still as another finger was added and they dove deep inside him. “You're alright,” he murmured, curling those fingers until he'd brushed against something inexplicably _pleasant_ inside him. It wasn't something miraculous by any means but it wasn't unwelcome either. The stretch of his body around those invading fingers was difficult to ignore and when the man began to move his wrist, Cole's body shuddered. “Relax, Cole.”

“I can't,” he breathed. “I can't. Please...”

Gabe dipped his other hand's fingers into the jar and took Cole's cock into his hand, leisurely stroking him while he kept up that maddening thrusting. His voice was low, the Alpha edge to it turning it sultry and husked with arousal. “I know you can relax for me. I know you can take me. Your body is just as ready to take me as an Omega's would be. Will you be my big, panting, desperate Omega?”

“ _Ahhhnnn..._ ” It was too much to hear. Too much to process. Imagining himself as a meek and writhing nymph in this Alpha's arms sent dangerous shivers of pleasure and excitement through his body. This fantasy was more than he could handle. His cheeks were burning. His whole body was burning. Was it humiliation? Was it true and honest arousal? Why did he find this so perfectly _wonderful?_ Surely there had to be some kind of magic. Surely this witch had placed a spell on him. “ _Oh..._ ” he moaned, tossing his head to the side while he panted and heaved with this Alpha between his thighs. “ _You've bewitched me..._ ”

“I beg to differ,” Gabe murmured, sliding his thumb over the tip of Cole's manhood, pressing gently over the slit. “I believe it is _you_ who's bewitched _me_.” He pressed a third finger into Cole's body and opened him diligently, adding more lubrication when it was necessary and moving his fingers per every cue, every motion that his lover's movements suggested. “Will you take me, Alpha?” he asked with raised brows. “Will you let me?”

“Don't...Don't ask,” Cole whined, shielding his eyes with the arm that was not braced against Gabe's shoulder.

“I will ask. I will always ask. I'll not assume you will.”

“Mmmgh,” Cole grunted, displeased by his having to say it. It wasn't begging, it was merely a consent. He disliked the choice. He disliked having to openly say it. Despite that, he nodded and grumbled it out loud. “Yes. I want you to...to do it.”

“Alright. You do have to relax for me, Alpha.”

“Piss off,” he mumbled, keeping his arm slung dramatically over his eyes. Without his sight, it was too easy to feel every brush of flesh against flesh and too easy to hear the wet, erotic sounds of his mate's fingers moving inside him. When they were gone, he clenched tight, gauging his body's resilience until he felt the brush of something much larger against him. He let go of a small whimper and shot upward, his hand upon Gabe's shoulder gripping tight enough that the doctor grunted, his expression pained. “Wait! Wait...” There was panic lighting up his senses, his heartbeat thudding in his chest while Gabe's hands kneaded his hips.

“You're alright,” Gabe reminded him in a softer, more mild tone. “You're alright, Alpha. We don't have to—”

“No...yes. I want you to...” He let his eyes meet with his mate's shining gray ones and he forced himself to let go of Gabe's shoulder, feeling guilty over the red marks left by his fingers. “I'm...sorry.”

“Shhh.” Gabe leaned forward, capturing Cole's lips in playing open-mouthed kisses that tingled in his senses and opened him while the Alpha pushed him back again and held himself poised against the tight ring of his entrance, slicked and ready to push forward at any moment. Cole trembled beneath him and still found himself distracted by those measured, searching kisses that took all his concentration to entertain. In the midst of them, Gabe paused and panted against Cole's cheek. “ _Do you want me, mate?_ ”

“Yes... _yes..._ ”

The push wasn't sudden but gradual and Cole's fingers gripped at Gabe's forearm as he was breached, his breathing in hisses through his teeth even as his lover mouthed at his throat and grated his teeth over that sensitive flesh. He was penetrated, invaded, and diligently opened by that force between his legs while his toes curled, his knees locked around his lover's body, and every fiber of his instinct screamed at him to push it out. To keep it from happening.

His mate whispered into his ear, the sentiment enough to make him gasp. “ _Would you rather I stopped?_ ”

“ _No!_ No. Please. I want this. _Don't stop._ ”

“I'm going to move inside you. Alright, Alpha?” The man's voice was thin, held together if only by the strings of his reverent passion and with every second that he remained buried within that clenching heat, he would lose more and more of himself. He had to move and Cole knew it.

“Yes...”

Even as he had thought he was prepared for it, he could not have been. It was subtle at first, the stretching girth of his lover easing in and out of him, the inches of that engorged erection sliding back and forth and rhythmically grinding against his inner walls. Everything about it was edging him into a frenzy that manifested in stuttering gasps, clasping grips over his mate's shoulders, and keening mewls of slippery, erotic pleasure. The tingling static at the base of his spine spread through him, creeping into his thighs and enveloping his groin while Gabe stroked him, worshiping that flesh with every rocking movement. The whisper of the trees above them, the birdsong of midday, it was all drowned by the loving mumbles that Gabe managed and the sound of his own breathy, trembling grunts. He was drowning in his sensations: the foreignness of presence inside him, the smoke scent of his forbidden Alpha lover, the inherent shame of his attraction, and most of all, most _importantly_ of all, this sudden golden pool that shined inside his heart when he gazed upward and studied the planes of his mate's face, tightened in concentration and shining with the sweat of his exertion.

“G-Gabe,” he managed, though his lips felt numb, his lungs forcing shallow breaths through the force of his heightening pleasure. He felt a heat prick at the backs of his eyes when his mate gazed down at him, still rocking back and forth in quick, clean thrusts. He didn't want to have to say it. He loathed having to _say_ such things. He wanted to merely be understood and yet he knew beyond all doubt that he would have to let it slip from his lips or the man would never truly get it, even if he were to declare forever after to be his mate, he would _never understand_ that molten emotion that welled up and shined hard from within him. “Guh-Gabe...” he breathed, feeling tears slip from the corners of his eyes, “I...I luh...I luhv...”

Gabe's eyes shut tight and his mouth opened in a silent howl while his whole being tensed and shuddered, his body curling down while he shook through the intensity of his climax. He was caught in the throes of it, the pulse and throbbing waves of its ebb allowing him only the barest sounds through his gasps of breath. He was trembling when he managed to once again open his eyes, those gray openings to his soul shining in the light of the afternoon sun. “Oh _God,_ Cole...” He nearly collapsed, taking his lips with devotion while he shivered through the aftermath. “ _I love you...I love you... I do. Please. Uhhhnnn..._ ”

Cole couldn't help but to whimper again when Gabe's hand upon him tightened and stroked him, milking him for everything he could offer until he found his own release, hard and explosive while he clutched at Gabe's shoulders, dragging his nails down his Alpha's back and canting his hips in search of that touch of fire. “ _Ahn. Ahn! Nngh!_ ”

They panted together, hot and sticky and wet while Cole intermittently purred in the warmth of the afternoon, lazily drawing circles over Gabe's bare back as the man lay upon him, his softening cock still buried inside him. There were going to be many afternoons like this, he thought contentedly, his purring becoming more regular as his breathing returned to normal, deepening the timber of it and rumbling through his partner. There would be many warm summer nights entangled in his mate's arms and plenty of bitterly cold winter ones where flesh upon flesh was the most prudent of ways to stay warm next to their fire.

“Thank you...” Gabe mumbled close to Cole's throat, his breath sending gooseflesh rising from the epicenter.

“For what?”

“For letting me...”

Cole felt himself bubble with a gentle laugh. “You're my mate.” He passed his fingers through Gabe's blonde hair, ruffling it a bit. “It's natural.”

“Many would consider you mad.”

He scoffed openly, allowing himself a selfish grin. “Many would be wrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmmmm hmm hmm. That's right. Alpha bounty hunter boyfriends? Uh huh, baby. That's a thing now.
> 
> I apologize for not mentioning Lizard Baby. That is 100% my fault (although these two were having sex and they didn't have any interest in talking about a baby during sex so it might be their fault too). If you're interested in Lizard Baby conversational drabble blurbs, well I'll just have to make some on Tumblr for ya.
> 
> Thank you for coming along on this Western ride with me, I really appreciate anyone who has recommended my stories, kept along with reading, and has taken the time to comment. You're the salt of the earth, everyone. Have a wonderful day and I hope you'll join me for my next project. :3
> 
> If you'd like to contact me outside of Ao3's comments, you can forget about my Tumblr which was an unfortunate casualty of its murder/suicide and contact me on Twitter or Pillowfort, [@JD_Riley19](https://twitter.com/JD_Riley19), or [J.D. Writes](https://www.pillowfort.io/JDWrites).


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